


As Long As There's Light

by PrettyLittleBiter (KissKissCrush)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Bloodplay, Damerux, Dirty Talk, Excessive sass, Fluff and Smut, Gingerpilot, Hoe - Freeform, Light Bondage, M/M, Romantic Comedy, Semi-Slow Burn, Spanking, flirtatious kidnapping, generalpilot, i said romantic comedy and i meant it, i use regular swearing because i don't understand star wars swearing, kylo bashing (affectionate), redemption arc, see my tumblr for the recommended playlist, suggested kylux, there will be art there too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-06-07 22:56:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 78,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6828502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KissKissCrush/pseuds/PrettyLittleBiter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unapologetic RomCom trashfic where instead of being freed by Finn during his own escape from the First Order, Poe takes Hux hostage and escapes the Finalizer with him in a TIE fighter which crashes on the way to D’Qar leaving them stranded on a marshy, seemingly uninhabited planet without any hope of quick rescue by either side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Adventurous

**Author's Note:**

> I like italics. Fair warning.

Most people likely would have been at least startled by having a hand unexpectedly placed over their mouth by an unseen person, but Hux’s reaction was only somewhere between mild surprise and another more intimate sensation he wouldn’t have voiced aloud without significant coercion and which had been unfortunately discovered by one other person in the recent past. He didn’t struggle as a result, not at first—there was no alarm at all in fact until he noted the angle of the arms holding him, the height of the person’s exhale on his neck. It wasn’t Kylo. This person was much shorter. Even shorter than Hux himself, but he still didn’t consider an immediate fight due to the additional presence of a blaster pistol cooly grazing his cheek. Hux wasn’t sure what kind of idiot would be brave, stupid or desperate enough to fire a blaster that close to their own face, but it was probably pretty close to the same kind of idiot who thought this detainment of him was a good idea. 

“What do you want?” Hux asked against the hand. His voice was low and unconcerned, sounding clipped and official even while being muffled that way. He hoped this would perhaps unnerve his attacker enough to shatter whatever confidence may have brought him to that moment.

“I want a ship,” said a voice near Hux’s ear, it was male and as calm as Hux’s at least if not containing the same official-sounding tone. He added, “And an escort,” in an equally sedate tone but like he was making it up on the spot as well. 

Even if the height hadn’t given him away as not being Kylo, the voice would have and again this was something Hux would have not readily admitted—that he knew not only what Kylo Ren’s voice sounded like without his ridiculous mask on but that he was especially familiar with hearing it in his ear from a similar position as Hux’s very unwise kidnapper.

“Are you defecting?” Hux asked, feeling that this had to have been wrong somehow. If this were an officer on board or even a low level trooper, they would know who he was and wouldn’t think kidnapping their highest ranking leader was even close to the best way to escape the Order.

“I’m not one of you,” the voice said—a strange accent and a misplaced sort of mirth were both apparent in this revelation.

Now Hux knew exactly what kind of idiot this was: that pathetic Resistance pilot Kylo had been torturing earlier trying to discover the location of his former Jedi master. It had to be. No stormtrooper would have such an accent or dare this coup even if they’d gone legitimately mad.

“Poe Dameron,” Hux said, feeling—probably stupidly himself, but he didn’t care—smug about it.

“I—uh, yeah,” the voice confirmed, sounding a little bit thrown by his abductee knowing his name apparently.

Hux smiled slightly against Poe’s fingers. He couldn’t help it. He loved giving off the impression that no one was ever a step ahead of him—it was usually true—and it was especially amusing in this situation. Even under a surprise attack he enjoyed having the upper hand, which he was sure he did, sure that Dameron had zero idea who he’d caught or how much his prey knew about him.

“I know everything that happens on my ship,” Hux said, his voice louder now as the hand had loosened, probably out of surprise.

“Your ship?”

He didn’t sound scared or concerned which Hux found annoying and which actually made him a bit nervous. Although it was true that members of the Resistance were universally fairly reckless, he knew this man was particularly lacking in the kind of judgement Hux could trust to be reasonable or predictable. He was probably congratulating himself in fact. Wrongly, but Hux almost respected his lack of fear.

He’d gone over every bit of information in their database on Poe Dameron—which was quite a lot it turned out—after his capture, and after Hux had listened from the corridor to Poe’s interrogation. He’d gone looking in the database, because, like he’d said, he knew everything that happened on his ship but also to distract himself from the perverse knowledge that listening to Kylo brutalize someone turned him on a bit. It wasn’t their screams or pain exactly, but Kylo’s dominance and wild, borderline insane way of controlling and frightening people. He’d felt that discomfort himself around Kylo in the beginning, but it had waned quickly as all of his fears did. Fear was a unwise quality to possess for someone in his position, and he refused to endorse it in himself even with a blaster pistol pressed to his face.

“Yes, _my_ ship,” he repeated.

There was silence for a few seconds.

“Rethinking your plan now?” Hux asked, sure he was in no real danger somehow.

“Nope. Sorry, Dandelion. Just impressed with my luck is all.”

 _Dandelion?_ What the—this must have been a jab at his hair color. Which was _red_ not yellow anyway. This grated on him more than he would have liked.

“Luck? You think is a _lucky_ turn? Well, you’re dumber than I gave you credit for then.”

“Oh yeah, this is brilliant. Not so great for you, Commander—”

“ _General_ ,” Hux corrected. Like it mattered at all. Not when this plan was inevitably foiled. Not when he’d disposed of Poe in the worst way he could come up with. Maybe he could get Kylo to behead him with that tacky fire sword. It would make a great holovid to send to the Resistance. A classic. Their precious “best pilot” executed by the First Order and the evidence distributed across the galaxy like a gruesome love letter, signed by Hux laughing in the background. He almost laughed then just thinking about it.

“Your clearance could get me into anything I wanted in here . . .” Poe said like he was thinking of adding onto his escape plan by looting the place on his way out. “But then, I guess I wouldn’t even need intelligence from here since _you_ know everything that goes on, right? Congratulations. Now you get to live, General Dande—”

“Hux!” he nearly shouted, tired of this situation and starting to sweat which made him feel weak and not in control of his own body—the two things he probably hated the most.

“Hux. Right. I thought you’d be shorter . . .” Poe mused. “Anyway, I hope you’re the adventurous type, Hux. Because we’re about to have a good one.”

Hux was grateful he was turned away because the word “adventurous” always caused him to react a certain way after Kylo had used it to describe his own sexual interests once. It turned out Kylo’s tastes weren’t as bent as he’d wanted to believe, but Hux would forever associate that word with the possibility of pleasure he _could_ have with a more imaginative partner. His cheeks felt warm, and he shifted in Poe’s hold without meaning to.

“I think you mean you’re about to have a short one,” Hux countered, ready for this to end so he could shower and pretend this moron hadn’t managed to upset him even the small amount that he had.

“Yeah? How do you figure that?” Poe asked, sounding only vaguely curious. More like he was just being polite actually, which was maddening.

“Because I’m sort of well-known around here, you utter fool. You think you can waltz out of here with a blaster on me and everyone’s just going to step aside and let it happen? Maybe that’s what would happen in your soft-hearted little—”

“Oh no,” Poe interrupted. “Of course not. Your face will be covered. As will mine.” He used the muzzle of the pistol to push on Hux’s cheek forcing him to look to his right where a pile of black clothing and two shiny black helmets sat on the table next to them. They were the uniforms of TIE fighter pilots.

Hux didn’t need to know the rest of the plan. Poe thought he was just going to walk right out dressed as a First Order pilot with no trouble at all and the annoying part was that he was right: that wouldn’t be hard at all. Hell, most _everyone_ on board was wearing a helmet already. The two of them wouldn’t even get a second look.

“You don’t think it will look strange that one of the pilots has a blaster trained on his copilot? All I have to do is shout right now, you dummy.”

“Awwww, you don’t want to be like that,” Poe said like he was talking to a drunk friend who thought it might be fun to go for a walk on the outside of a space station. “You’ll have this on under your suit.”

Hux felt something cool and sticky touch his neck and then stay there even after Poe had removed his hand. He froze.

“What is that?” He asked, keeping his voice steady but able to hear concern in it anyway. He didn’t know if anyone else would have heard it though. He only heard it because he also felt it.

“Go ahead and shout if you want to find out,” Poe said holding up a small silver box in front of Hux’s face that had a tiny red button sticking out of it. “It’ll be in my hand the whole time.”

Hux thought about shouting anyway. As long as he got to watch Poe die before he did, it might be worth it. He wasn’t thinking very clearly. Poe had removed the pistol meaning his confidence in whatever he’d attached to Hux’s neck was absolute and considering that whatever this unseen device was had probably come from the technicians of the Resistance that meant it was old, outdated and unstable like everything they owned and everything they did.

It turned out Poe was already wearing everything but the helmet himself meaning only Hux would be subjected to the awkwardness of changing in front of a stranger. He decided not to flinch, not to let Poe know how much he hated that idea. He stripped to his undershirt and shorts without blushing or complaint, even stopping to place his clothing in a nice way next to the heap of TIE pilot gear—good to show he was intending to come back for it. He couldn’t stop himself from looking at Poe as he did this to check if he’d caught the significance of Hux’s actions.

Poe was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest and an obnoxious smirk on his face. He spun the little button box in his fingers when Hux looked. Hux barely stopped a scoff. He’d have Kylo start with Poe’s feet and work his way up, he decided. He’d seen the wounds from that thing, they were bloodless, sealed tight and shiny. Poe would live until he was just a torso with a head and it would be marvelous to witness.

Hux finished dressing himself until he got to the vest with communications and life support gear that went over the top of everything and then needed Poe to assist him which caused a bizarre moment of too familiar cooperation as Poe helped him secure everything properly—one-handed, of course, the button still in his other hand. Hux wasn’t about to try sabotaging this part because he didn’t want to end up in a cockpit in half a suit if they really did make it off the ship together. He wasn’t a bad pilot himself and was fully capable of bringing the fighter back safely if he could manage to free himself from Poe’s control. He didn’t want to have to fiddle or be hindered by an unsecured strap if that opportunity presented itself.

“Looking sharp, my friend,” Poe said genially, shoving the helmet into Hux’s chest. It was already attached to him by the tube that ran from the front of the mask to his chest plate, and he obediently put it on while Poe attached his own and lifted it up over his head, concealing his face and causing a moment of disorientation for Hux as Poe now looked liked someone he usually commanded with his identity cloaked by the helmet.

It was also unsettling for Hux to cover his own face in this way. In a moment, his position was erased. He was just a nameless pilot, as anonymous and disposable as any other on the ship. The Order wasn’t like Poe’s side with their open-faced helmets to show who was driving—everyone special, everyone with a name, everyone mourned in death. Hux could literally get shot dead during this if anyone suspected anything weird was going on or — and this was legitimately concerning—murdered for fun by Kylo Ren if they happened on him at the wrong moment on their way to the flight deck. Kylo hadn’t had much respect for Hux’s crew in the past and Hux had generally overlooked it as long as he didn’t do it too often or kill anyone useful.

On the whole, no one TIE pilot qualified as indispensable, although slightly more than your average stormtrooper who were about as individually precious as a single grain in a bag of sand—now Hux was sand. So he had a secondary reason to behave aside from the device attached to his neck. Honestly, once the helmet was on securely, Poe didn’t even need whatever that thing was, because after they’d exited this room, Hux couldn’t have done anything worse than look out of place or un-regimented which was entirely, and ironically, his own fault as he’d trained everyone on the ship to look out for that sort of thing and report any aberration in behavior.

They didn’t pass many people on the way which was lucky because even though Hux was trying to keep time with Poe’s steps so they looked in tune with each other at least if not with everyone else, Hux felt like there was a giant, blinking light over their heads signaling that something wasn’t right.

They encountered a guard at the bay doors which Poe smoothly talked his way past—using Hux’s name no less—and got them onto the platform and next to a ship without any trouble. It was madness. He’d be changing security protocol to high suspicion of everyone when he got back there.

Hux considered just throwing the whole thing anyway right at the last but his own intense level of self-preservation prevented him from doing this. He wasn’t the kind of hero born to die in a firefight. He was born to be a leader. In the center of his mind he had always carried a secret belief that his destiny would culminate under the title of Emperor. It wasn’t a dream or a vague ambition, it held the power of a prophecy for him personally. This poorly planned kidnapping would just become part of his legacy later on. Maybe Poe was dumb enough to fly the TIE fighter to the actual Resistance base itself with Hux on board. His revenge fantasy of Kylo dismembering Poe in neat slices morphed into Hux giving the order to use the Order’s beautiful new weapon on them first, obliterating every one of them in a flash of heat and ending their preposterous little rebellion in one glorious instant. It was borderline erotic, and he was clenching his jaw with a grim sort of joy as he climbed into the rear seat of the TIE.

He was silent as Poe communicated with far too much ease with the ground crew and then . . . they were speeding out into the endless starry velvet of space and Poe was laughing obnoxiously loud in his ear.

Hux went back to picturing Poe being slowly dismembered as the hulk of the Finalizer shrank through the rear window.


	2. Gimme Shelter

“I thought you were the best pilot in the galaxy! What the _hell_ was _that_?”

Hux had his helmet off and he was shouting, his heart still seized up to the point that it felt like it hadn’t resumed beating yet. 

“I’ve never flown one of these before . . .” Poe said, sounding calm, even amused, as he surveyed the wreck of the TIE fighter which they’d barely escaped from before it caught fire following the crash.

“The controls aren’t that different from yours!” Hux said, still half-shouting. He knew exactly how the other side’s ships worked. He’d had detailed schematics back in the databanks of the Finalizer. He liked knowing things and spent his free time just shifting through files and following cross-references, sometimes studying with more focus like with the X-Wing fighters he knew Poe had flown before.

“Where are we? Is this where your base is?” Hux asked, spinning in a circle to look at the marshy, plant swollen landscape around them. There was a weird ground cover of fog that hovered at shin level and shifted around making it impossible to really see much of what was underfoot. It made Hux nervous. He liked being sure of where he was going both in the moment and in general.

“Uh . . . no?” Poe said, squinting up into the semi-darkness of the tree cover. The sky wasn’t visible through the thick, overlapping branches and scabby-looking vines hanging from them like rotting party decorations.

“No? You don’t _know_ if your base is here?”

“Those things don’t exactly have long-range guidance systems. They were built for small conflicts surrounding larger—”

_“I know what they were built for!”_

“Sure. Of course,” Poe said, still annoyingly relaxed.

“Well?” Hux asked after allowing thirty seconds of silence to pass while Poe pivoted on his heels, gazing around them curiously.

“Well, what?”

“What’s the plan now?”

“Not sure,” Poe answered, placing his hands on his hips like he was posing for a picture.

“Great,” Hux muttered, wanting to keep yelling but not having anything more to say. He wasn’t equipped to be playing survival games on an unknown planet with no glowing screens or firm flooring in sight.

“We should probably find some kind of shelter, though. It’ll be dark soon,” Poe said after a few more moments of surveying the dense, wet forest around them.

“How can you tell?”

Poe squinted at him for a few seconds before responding. “I’m afraid to answer that.”

“Why?”

“Because if I tell you how I know, you’ll probably think I’m calling you stupid which I’m guessing you wouldn’t take very well.”

Hux looked around like he’d seen Poe do, trying to see if there was some obvious sign of nightfall coming which he’d missed. The atmosphere was dim in general, and he really couldn’t tell if it was darker than it had been on their descent. He’d been a bit distracted by being upside down for part of their uncoordinated approach to notice the angle or position of any surrounding suns.

“And you’re alive, aren’t you?” Poe added.

“What does that have to do with nightfall?”

“Nothing. Just that thing you said about my flying. . .” Poe said. “Not a scratch on you.”

He gestured to Hux’s intact suit and helmet. It was true that they’d walked away somehow entirely unharmed after the crash, but that didn’t seem like much of an endorsement of Poe’s abilities. Just not killing your passengers was the absolute minimum standard for a pilot. Not wrecking the ship on landing was just above that, slightly more if Hux was honest, valuing his ships more than his pilots as a rule.

“This doesn’t actually look too bad . . .” Poe said, turning back to the TIE which was titled drastically to one side, thick, blueish smoke still issuing from its center.

A loud, sickening suctioning sound suddenly filled the air and the ship sank about six feet into the marshy pond it was sitting it before stopping with one of the large plate-like wings half-buried in the mud.

“Yes, you’ve done a marvelous job,” Hux said sourly. “I can’t believe I questioned you.”

Poe just shrugged. “The fire’s going out at least . . .”

“That’s because the cockpit is full of water, you dolt.”

“There just aren’t any bright sides with you, are there?”

Hux wondered if he’d be able to land a punch if he caught Poe off guard.

“At least take this _thing_ off of me. It’s not like there’s anywhere for me to go now,” Hux said, pointing at his neck where whatever device Poe had placed on him back on the Finalizer was still attached, rubbing on the neck of his suit and reminding him that he was still under Poe’s power making an attack unwise. Unless he’d lost the control in the crash . . .

Poe turned to him and actually grinned. “Oh, that,” he said and reached into Hux’s collar. He pulled off whatever it was and held it up for Hux to see. It was a small white globby mass that didn’t look especially threatening.

Hux watched with dawning rage and shock as Poe put the it in his mouth and started chewing it. It was—

“Just gum. Sorry. We do the best with what we have,” he said, grinning again, a bit of the gum visible between his teeth.

Hux was so furious he was beyond reaction for several moments. Poe was _chewing it_ after it had been on his neck. Then: he must have been chewing it _before_ as well to make it stick in the first place. He swiped at his neck like he could erase Poe’s saliva, now effectively stapled to his skin without any clean water to remove it.

“You—” Hux started and then his anger rushed into him unfreezing his muscles and he did go after Poe, but not with a punch, with his fingers clawed, intending to mar his face with ten neat gouges. He maybe got one before Poe reversed the momentum of the attack and they both slapped down onto the ground, only now with Hux on his back and both wrists pinned solidly to his chest.

Hux settled for insults which he threw upward like spit into Poe’s face. He would never actually spit on anyone. The thought was disgusting, but it reminded him of Poe’s saliva already on him and he felt himself flush. He brought his knee up perfectly between Poe’s thighs, aiming for a specific place but not quite making it. Poe caught his knee before it got that high, trapping Hux’s leg between his firmly. Although Poe was several inches shorter, he outweighed Hux by quite a bit and it was apparently heavily made up of muscle.

“Let me go,” Hux said, now trying to sound calmer than he was. The anger was fading in favor of a deep, penetrating sense of humiliation. Being kidnapped by a moron was one thing, being kidnapped with a fucking piece of chewing gum was so beyond horrifying he almost wished they’d both been killed before this discovery. “Please,” he added, adding a new kind of embarrassment to the already unprecedented levels of awfulness he was feeling. He was being polite now out of necessity. He had another reason for needing to be released as the discovery of it by Poe would be too much: Hux liked being pinned. A lot.

“Are you going to attack me again?” Poe asked, his tone soft as a lullaby.

“No.” He wouldn’t. He was just desperate to escape the sick pleasure of Poe’s weight on him, of Poe’s thighs holding him, immobilizing him head to foot.

His hands were freed first and he placed them on Poe’s chest and pushed trying to keep it from seeming aggressive. Poe sat up, resting on his heels, straddling Hux’s leg high up where he’d captured it between his.

“Get. Off. Me,” Hux said, fixing his eyes on Poe’s chest to stop them from darting to other places on Poe’s body that could reveal his gross, currently successfully suppressed arousal. Literally anywhere else seemed dangerous just then: certainly Poe’s hands so recently restraining his wrists, and Poe’s face wasn’t an option either even to check if he’d done damage there, definitely not at his legs—way too close to the last place he should be looking. Distantly and shamefully though he was curious if Poe had also enjoyed their brief entanglement in the same way. He’d certainly not shied from a wealth of contact with Hux’s body in his subduing.

Poe stood and then offered his hand. Hux wanted with everything in him to refuse this help, but the mud they’d landed in—or he had landed in anyway, Poe had only dirty knees to show for it—had ran into the back of that hard plastic vest and was holding him glued to the ground like a flipped turtle.

“Okay then,” Poe said when Hux was standing again, like they’d reached an agreement of some kind. “Shelter?”

“Fine,” Hux said like he was granting Poe a favor by agreeing to look for a place to sleep.

It didn’t take long it turned out. After a short, but still exhausting, trek through the trees—made exponentially more difficult by having to skirt puddles of unknown depth and the fact that the damp ground slurped greedily at your heels with every step—they reached what was essentially a small island in the swamp, dominated by a domed, muddy-walled dwelling with doors and windows so low to the ground that Hux was sure neither of them would fit inside let alone both. He also felt that they’d found the place far too easily and perhaps Poe _did_ know where they were and his calm was the result of him being sure of his own quick rescue—and Hux’s capture—by his Resistance allies.

Poe, however, was a remarkably transparent person as far as his feelings and his clear curiosity about the dwelling made Hux feel he was likely also seeing it for the first time.

Once they’d actually reached the place and bent down to look inside, Hux was relieved to find that the low door was a bit of an illusion and the sunken earthen floor inside made the interior much larger than it looked from the outside.

It was dim in there and empty in an abandoned way—not the house of someone who was just out for awhile. No one lived here anymore and probably hadn’t for some time. There was a dark, stale smell coming from inside that underlined the feeling of vacancy, and Hux drew away from the entrance, backing into Poe who steadied him with a hand on his back that sent sharp sparks of fresh arousal down his legs making him feel irritated and breathless. He was being insane. The upsets of the day seemed to have activated some uncontrollably primal reactions he hadn’t really experienced since he was a teenager.

He let Poe go ahead pf him and then looked away when Poe bent low to go inside. The feelings and sensations that kept flooding him were reminiscent of a painful time for him, of when he’d first become aware that it was the boys at his school he wanted, not the girls from the adjoining school which they saw infrequently, sure, but enough for the other boys to notice them in that way. It wasn’t a problem of accessibility to the opposite sex, Hux was sure of that, if not always during the day, definitely at night, laying face down in bed trying to pretend his dick wasn’t hard and insistent under him, trying to pretend it wasn’t being caused by recalling the strong, tapered backs of the older boys lifting weights or the ripe, laughing mouths of his classmates enjoying friendships he himself didn’t have as they moved in loping groups through the hallways.

At seventeen, he’d given up trying to deny it and instead turned viciously, but still internally, practical about it. He faced it with the quiet brutality he went about his school work and training. He allowed the fantasies that were usually confined to his dreams to overflow into his thoughts during leisure times. After that, when he was bullied for being small or ginger-haired he took a fierce, private joy in picturing them gasping and undone while he made them come with his mouth or while roughly riding them to finish. Sex became linked to revenge in his mind during that time which was probably why he’d so readily succumbed to Kylo Ren’s extremely inept advances the first time they’d been together. Kylo’s thickly muscled body reminded him of the jocks he’d jerked off to and his impulsive, greedy nature was just like the lesser bullies who used their own insecurities to crush those few lower down on the social register. The act of fucking Kylo Ren was all of his school age fantasies come to life and making Kylo come felt like a sign of his own superiority over every single one of them.

He wondered if fucking Poe Dameron would feel the same. If it would feel like bringing the entire Resistance under his power to have Poe shout his name in pleasure the way Kylo did sometimes. Especially if he could get arrogant, righteous Poe to call him General during it . . .

Hux turned away as Poe emerged from the little bubble-walled hovel, allowing only the swamp and its as yet unseen creatures to view the smug little half smile that had fixed itself on his face during this brief, ridiculous imagining.

* * *

It turned out that Poe was right and night fell fast and dark around them as they cleared debris and a few stray critters from the hut to make it inhabitable enough for that night at least.

It was certainly an interesting dwelling, rugged but containing odd bits of technology molded into its ancient-looking, curved walls. There was even a small sink with actual running water at the rear of the main space and behind that a room with a basin large enough for a small person to bathe in comfortably and a larger person to probably squeeze in if they were desperate. Above the sink was a carved out sleeping area. It was low-ceilinged but cut deeply into the side of the massive tree which made up the skeleton of the house within the cage of its roots. There was a tiny, roughly circular window at the very back of the space which lit it up in blue tones.

There were electric lights as well, built into the mud walls, their covers broken bits of plastic glued together to soften their glow but still, they were actual electric lights. Hux was sure they wouldn’t work and at first they didn’t. But Poe, who Hux admitted internally was impressively resourceful, had found a small generator in back and made them work somehow. There was a fire pit built into the wall as well, but it had been so filled with junk dragged into it by swamp creatures—likely a family of one of the bograts they’d evicted earlier—that it wasn’t possible to build a fire in there that first night even if they had had any dry materials to burn. It had started raining forcefully around the same time the light disappeared. The drops zinging down hard like silvery bullets that stung your skin when they landed. Going back outside to look around for anything else useful wasn’t an option.

The sink had to run a bit before the water cleared but after that it was actually really nice which was good as there wasn’t anything else even remotely edible among the remainder of the unknown former inhabitant’s things. Hux settled for drinking as much water as possible hoping just filling his stomach would be good enough to sleep on. He’d actually eaten not long before he’d been accosted by Poe so he wasn’t about to die. Unless Poe had stolen food along the way, however, it had probably been some time since he’d had anything solid. He didn’t appear fatigued or show any outward signs of deprivation, but it was possible that a lack of proper nutrition had caused his less than impressive landing in the swamp—not that Hux was looking to make excuses for Dameron’s mistakes that had stranded them there.

Poe seemed to find the contents of the hut far more fascinating than Hux thought was warranted until he came upon a few books which had been stuffed into a tiny shelf under one of the windows. Hux tried not to seemed interested, but he liked reading and actual paper books meant they were probably older than both of them. 

Poe sat in the center of the floor to flip through one and Hux leaned forward to see, annoyed that he couldn’t help himself.

“What is it?” he asked finally when he found the light too low in there to really see the pages without moving closer which he wasn’t about to do.

“I don’t know. I can’t read this language . . .” Poe said, continuing to flip through the pages anyway.

Hux was tempted to ask if he could read in _any_ language but instead he just said, “Let me see it.”

Poe immediately closed the book and passed it over, then scooted closer himself like he expected a bedtime story. Hux angled away before opening the little book. It’s cover was probably soft leather at some point, but it had hardened into an unpleasantly-textured vise which crackled when he opened it. The pages were in pretty good shape. Hux couldn’t read it either but—

“Must have been here awhile . . .” Poe said.

“Yes,” Hux agreed but only because he now had more information about this place than Poe did and just knowing that made him feel better. Better still to casually pass on his new information to someone who couldn’t have hoped to figure it out on their own. It wasn’t like the supposed pleasure he’d heard teachers sometimes felt, it was more about showing off that he was faster and smarter than other people. “It was written by a Jedi,” he revealed, not even bothering to look up for Poe’s reaction.

“What? No joke?”

Hux found the book tugged rudely out of his hands leaving them hanging empty in the same position, still cupped around an object he no longer held. He turned his head slowly and found Poe now flipping more interestedly through the pages, touching the ink and even holding the pages up to the light like a second message might be written there in invisible ink.

“I thought you couldn’t read it,” Hux said, wanting to recapture his lost superiority from having the book snatched away like that.

“I can’t. Can you?”

Hux wanted to say he could. He wanted to make Poe feel dumb and uneducated. A mean, self-deprecating little voice in the back of his head also huffed out that he probably wanted to _impress_ Poe as well. He squashed that voice and focused back on feeling better at least about knowing what it was when Poe didn’t—even if Hux couldn’t read it any more than Poe could.

“No,” he admitted. “I recognized the alphabet is all.”

_That was something at least,_ the little voice said, sneaking back as soon as Hux wasn’t actively pushing it away. He thought about mentioning how many languages he _could_ read and how many alphabets he _could_ identify but stopped himself, deeply uncomfortable about his lack of surety in regard to the reasons behind his own intentions in doing that.

“Then how do you know it was written by a Jedi?”

“We had vast databanks in the Order. I’ve studied them more thoroughly than probably anyo—”

“Had?”

“What?”

“You said ‘had’,” Poe pointed out. “Like you were referring to your ‘Order’ in the past tense.”

“I’m aware of the tense of ‘had’, thank you,” Hux said coldly. But his heart felt seized up again like it did right after the crash. “It was just a slip of the tongue. I only meant because I’m not there _right now_ so I obviously can’t have anything from there presently, can I? That makes past tense is accurate for the situation.”

That explanation didn’t really make sense, but he was confused himself and also angry he’d been interrupted that way while bragging about his knowledge. Clearly Poe was no scholar.

“Sure,” Poe said but something in it sounded condescending in a way which both annoyed and almost impressed Hux. He had assumed that Poe was incapable of the kind of high thought that was required for _true_ condescension. Being wrong about Poe’s intellectual capabilities wasn’t as comforting a thought as he felt it should be. If Poe was clever in a way he didn’t understand that would make it so much harder to control the outcome of the situation.

“Well, General Organa will love these, anyway,” Poe commented, closing the book and putting it safely and carefully back with the others. He sounded pathetic to Hux as he said this—a dog fetching a bone. “I’ll bet she can read them,” Poe added in a worshipful way that made Hux feel embarrassed for him. Hux actually had very little patience for sycophantic behavior even among his own crew. He preferred respect edged with fear. Which was one perk of having Kylo around actually. He brought this kind of electric, watchful tension into whatever room he entered that Hux envied secretly.

Poe was touching the spines of the other books in a thoughtful way, looking pleased with himself, maybe imagining being praised by Organa when he presented them to her later. Hux decided on taking her down a notch even if she wouldn’t be there to hear it.

“ _General_ Organa. You lot fancy yourselves a proper army then, do you?”

“Well, she’s been fighting wars and commanding troops longer than the First Order has even been around, so yeah, I’d say she’s a real general if that’s what you’re after,” Poe said in a cheery way that made Hux’s palms start to sweat under his gloves.

“It is _in her blood,_ I suppose . . .” Hux commented, letting it hang in the air, curious if Poe knew her true history or not, excited by the prospect of revealing who her father had been if Poe didn’t already know.

“Greatness is,” Poe agreed calmly, sitting down with his back against the wall next to the shelf, facing Hux.

“You think Vader was _great_?” Hux asked, momentarily startled into blurting his precious information inelegantly.

“Sure he was. A real bastard who wasted his powers on evil, but yeah, great. Great doesn’t mean good. It just means _important_.”

Hux pressed his lips together. Having this swaggering, smirking _pilot_ lecture him on word definitions was too much. He stood, intending to pace away like this conversation was boring him, but he had forgotten about how low the ceiling was and ended up just looking idiotic when his shoulder blades hit the curved top of the wall and showered him in a light dusting of the white mud they were made from. Poe didn’t laugh at him, though, which made Hux feel even more foolish. He would have preferred mirth, even at his expense over pity or—even worse— _sympathy_. That was for equals if ever, and Poe was not his equal.

He walked away, going to sit near the door instead to stare out at the rain.

“Do you want the bunk?” Poe asked a minute later.

“What?” Hux responded, not bothering to turn his head at first.

“There’s a spot up there you can sleep. I’ll take the floor,” Poe offered, gesturing to the alcove above the sink and then to the only really clear space on the floor just in front of the dead fire pit.

“Oh, you’re a _gentlemen_ kidnapper,” Hux said. “How nice for me.”

“Is that a no?”

Hux just ignored him, turning his head back to the falling rain.

“Suit yourself,” Poe said, followed by the sounds of him climbing into the tiny bunk space himself.

A moment later Hux was hit by something soft and dirty-smelling. He jumped and then saw it was just a blanket. Very dusty and woven originally out of scratchy, cheap fibers—probably not ever exactly comfy.

He shoved it off onto the floor at his feet and ended up falling asleep that way, one shoulder leaning against the edge of the circular doorway and his legs bent at an awkward angle behind him. He woke later to find the lights were out and his side and neck ached badly. He fumbled around in the dark, trying to get the buckles on the heavy chest plate to come undone. It came away eventually and dropped to the floor like the shed shell of a sea creature, leaving Hux—its newly shucked inhabitant—colder and just as soft and vulnerable as any creature that would crawl from one on a beach. Unlike them he had no larger, stronger place to move to—just a scrappy old blanket, the remnants of some long dead Jedi, to cover himself with.

He slid down onto his back and moved the blanket up only to his chest, not wanting the smell too near his face. He let the corner of the blanket slide through his fingertips for a moment, thinking of Kylo’s cloak, also made of some rough woven material like this though slightly nicer. He’d been a Jedi once as well. Or in training to be one. Hux didn’t know more than that about it. Kylo’s history wasn’t in his database, and he was maddeningly secretive about it even with Hux, even in post-sexual moments when people were more likely to be loose-lipped. Kylo had a vendetta against the Jedi order. Hux knew that much. He was desperate to get the map to Skywalker’s hiding place. He’d probably like the books here as well. There could be clues in there. Hell, this could be Luke’s house even. That didn’t feel right though. No way had a guy as supposedly powerful as Luke ever lived here. Aside from the oddly cramped interior, not built for any human man surely, Hux felt this wasn’t a place anyone who could command the Force that way would choose to live. Kylo wouldn’t even stoop—literally—to come in the door. But then, Hux wouldn’t have either under anything like normal circumstances. He momentarily enjoyed picturing Kylo choosing to just stand outside in his robes and helmet in the rain all night rather than crawl into what was basically a giant anthill for shelter. Hux congratulated himself on being more adaptable than that.

Why there were Jedi records of some kind here he couldn’t guess. It was possible they’d merely been stolen and kept here by someone else who didn’t understand them. He made a note to check the other books in the morning. Maybe only that one was in an unreadable alphabet and the others would be more informative. He started to relax then, soothed by the idea of potentially having an opportunity to study something the next day. Usually he couldn’t sleep at all without reading until he couldn’t physically stay awake anymore.

That wasn’t an option here. All he had was the rain, a small clicking sound he sincerely hoped wasn’t being caused by a bograt they’d failed to kick out, and the occasional sounds of Poe’s exhales or him shifting in his sleep.

A small, dark, close to the floor shape entered his vision then, and he reacted violently hitting whatever it was with the back of his hand and sending its body squeaking out into the rain. He wiped his hand uselessly on the blanket, cleaning nothing and just feeling worse as a result.

He should have taken the bunk at least.

He would tomorrow.

He didn’t want to believe he could still be there another night, but he didn’t see how anything else was possible.

 


	3. All the Same to Me

Hux awoke to the scent of something burning—or maybe melting as it didn’t resemble woodsmoke so much as charring plastic. Poe was crouched near his feet poking around inside of the fire pit where a small amount of muddy-colored smoke was drifting out and filling the already minimal airspace of the hut with its choking fumes. 

Although Hux was annoyed by this clumsy fire-starting attempt, he was also pleased to see Poe failing at something. A few seconds later, though, the smoke thinned out, and a weak yellow glow erupted under Poe’s arm.

Poe hooted gleefully, ruining the effect of his success in Hux’s mind. Openly showing that you were pleased with yourself was not something he would ever do. It showed a lack of confidence in your own abilities if you appeared surprised by anything you did.

“Oh, you’re awake,” Poe said when Hux shifted, pulling his legs away from where Poe was practically sitting on them.

“Yes, I was being suffocated. People tend to not sleep through that sort of thing.”

Poe waved his hand around, uselessly trying to clear the smoke which had already settled obstinately in the center of the domed ceiling like an sulking apparition.

“Yeah, this stuff was pretty damp, and it smoked a bit before starting. Sorry about that.”

“How long were you trying?” Hux asked, really hoping to find out he’d just seen the accidentally successful end of a long, pathetic series of failed attempts.

“Not long. Been up awhile, though. You sleep heavy,” Poe commented in a way that almost sounded like a compliment though his actual words contained nothing which could be called one.

Hux didn’t usually sleep heavily. He could be woken on a normal night by as little as a door hissing shut in the corridor outside of his quarters. That he’d slept more soundly on what was basically just packed dirt under a manky old tarp was very strange indeed.

He sat up, feeling somehow exposed though he was fully dressed, even still wearing his boots and gloves. Having a person in the room with him while he was sleeping and then finding them still there on waking wasn’t something Hux did, not even with Kylo, who slept even less soundly and usually vanished fairly fast after the purpose of their encounters had terminated.

Poe had removed parts of his own flight suit. The chest plate was off, of course, which he’d probably had sense enough to remove before going to sleep unlike what Hux had done, but he’d also unzipped the top half of the jumpsuit and left it hanging loose around his waist. He had a shirt under that, but it had short sleeves, his arms bare almost to the shoulder showing off that while he wasn’t as startlingly large as Kylo was when undressed, he wasn’t scrawny either. It was clear why he’d been able to subdue Hux as easily as he had the previous day. Hux swallowed loudly enough that he _heard_ it like it was a thunderclap and decided he would literally just go outside and drown himself in the swamp if he caught any indication that Poe had heard it as well and guessed why.

But Poe wasn’t paying any attention. He was turned away, fiddling with these little bundles of dried up herbs and berries which they hadn’t tossed with the other rubbish since these were hung from the ceiling and not part of the clutter that prohibited them staying there semi-comfortably. That he wasn’t looking at Hux did not end up being better because from this new angle Hux had a dangerously interesting view of Poe’s back which was exactly what you’d expect on someone with arms that well defined. He was caught staring at the point when he’d just started to tilt his head with a little bit too much appreciation, and he didn’t know how Poe could have failed to note and correctly interpret the way Hux’s head snapped to center and his eyes darted away. Poe said nothing, but there was no way he could be that innocent Hux decided. No one who looked the way Poe did was unaware of how people looked at them. Hux supposed it was possible that _because_ they looked that way that they didn’t notice because that was always happening, but he doubted it.

Hux wasn’t actually bothered by being caught looking the way he’d been when Poe turned. Unlike with his first unconscious reaction to Poe’s exposed arms, he’d been in relative control of himself during the second look. His rush to regain posture was something else, maybe a survival instinct, but not shame. He almost hoped Poe did know he’d been looking as long as he understood that an inspection like this from Hux was a much bigger compliment than one exactly like it from anyone else. Hux didn’t flirt, and he didn’t waste time ogling anyone who hadn’t earned it in some way. Just being physically attractive usually wasn’t enough which was why he considered his attention more worthy than that of others. He was never and would never be swayed by just a pretty face. Poe had better be _pretending_ not to have noticed and better be appropriately flattered as well was all.

“So, I was thinking,” Poe started, and Hux managed to stop himself from asking if that was a new development for him. “That these were probably gathered somewhere close to here. We might try finding something that looks similar.”

When Hux didn’t respond to this at all Poe added, “You know, for food. I figured since they were near the kitchen . . .”

But it wasn’t because he hadn’t understood that Hux had remained silent. It was the thought of having to go out and stomp around in a swamp searching for something edible that kept him mute. Poe wasn’t expecting immediate rescue. While Hux wasn’t too excited by the prospect of being taken prisoner by the Resistance, it did offer the possibility of access to things he clearly wouldn’t have here—like food brought to him, even if it was in a cell, and different clothing. And, maybe, a chance to contact his people and negotiate his release. The fact that the only person who the First Order may have had to offer in trade as a prisoner in exchange for Hux was the same person who had already kidnapped him made that much less likely, but it was still possible.

Poe had found a small, tattered bag somewhere and was stuffing the little bundles into it. He looped the strap around his neck but since it was made for a much, much smaller person it looked bizarre, the bag ending up nearly in his armpit once it was settled.

“You’re welcome to come along or stay here. All the same to me,” Poe said, taking Hux’s continued lack of input as a sign of hostility it seemed.

“I’ll go,” Hux said, with the same air of aloof agreement he’d used when acquiescing to the search for shelter.

Hux rose and examined himself for a few moments, considering if he should also try to shed some of the flight suit like Poe had done. He couldn’t picture himself in the same configuration, with half a jumpsuit flapping inelegantly around him like the torso of a flayed man, hanging upside down from his back. On Poe this looked silly, sure, but not laughable. He just sort of owned whatever space he was in and looked comfortable even with that sad little handbag stuffed into his armpit. Hux decided on not removing anything, not even the gloves—let them get dirty rather than his hands—and ducked down after Poe as he exited the hut.

“I also think we should go back and try to see if the TIE sank any more over night. If it didn’t, we might be able to find a way to . . . free it somehow.”

Poe’s use of “we” was a bit too liberal that morning for Hux’s taste. The leap from foraging for berries to digging a ship out of a mud pit barehanded was quite large, he thought, for anyone to so casually suggest as a shared activity even if they had been friends of some kind. That was the problem with people like those who joined rebellious, idealistic groups like the Resistance, they were so . . . intrepid. Not that a lack of trepidation was inherently bad, it was the way in which they went about it that bothered him, never considering even the most absurdly far-fetched odds to be a problem for them.

Hux had been watching his own feet as they went, carefully picking his way around the damp, moldering plant life which covered everything in sight, even climbing the flesh of the trees, like the planet was covered in some out-of-control infection which had steadily grown rot in its wounds left untouched by the interference of sentient beings. The ground cover of fog had been banished by the rain, but it was still not easy going, making him overly cautious about where he stepped. This was the kind of terrain that was sure to harbor quick mud and he wasn’t any more interested in digging _himself_ out of the mud barehanded than he was digging the ship out. It was because he wasn’t watching too far front of him that he ended up nearly falling down anyway. Poe had stopped walking abruptly causing Hux to smack solidly into him and nearly go off the vague path they’d been on into a suspiciously bubbly-looking patch of moss due to trying to keep his balance without grabbing Poe for support. Poe half-turned and caught Hux’s forearm, preventing this tumble. Hux shook him off without thanks.

“Why did you stop?” he asked instead, all irritation.

“There’s a grave here.”

“And?”

Poe turned his head to look directly at Hux at this and for the first time Hux caught a measure of annoyance there.

“And I didn’t want to trample it,” Poe said like this should have been obvious.

“Why? Whose grave is it?”

Poe stared at him for several seconds with an incredulous look that indicated he thought this was irrelevant.

“Well?” Hux pressed. “Is there a marker?”

Poe sighed and moved aside. There was a marker, not fancy by any means, but it had writing on it.

“It’s small. Maybe a child?” Poe suggested.

Hux squinted to keep himself from rolling his eyes even though Poe wasn’t looking at him. It wasn’t like it was _his_ child.

Poe had knelt down to see the marker more closely, actually letting his knees touch the ground despite its aggressively soggy condition. The overwrought reverence with which he did this made Hux pity him deeply, and not in any sort of nice way. He felt like all of his most savage assumptions about the members of General Organa’s puny rebellion were being confirmed by the way Poe was behaving. They were soft. They’d perish the way soft things always did, crushed in the grip of fate’s powerful hand which favored those who were ruthless over those who foolishly nurtured warmth of heart as a defining characteristic.

Poe was brushing at the marker’s face to clear some greenery which had crept thinly up its surface since whenever it had been placed there. Clearly they wouldn’t be moving on until this mystery was settled. Hux crouched down next to him, closer than he would have liked, but the path was narrow.

“Can you read this?” Poe asked, his voice hushed like he was afraid of disrupting the peaceful rest of the grave’s inhabitant.

Hux leaned in closer. He could read it. It was an old dialect not used for some time, probably not since the fall of the Empire.

“‘Here lies Master Yoda . . . the greatest Jedi who ever lived . . . this is . . . sacred ground,’” Hux read, hearing the derision in his voice on the last few words but unable to squash it.

“Wow,” Poe said, his voice still smothered into a near whisper. “I wonder who he was . . .”

“‘The greatest Jedi who ever lived’ would be my first guess,” Hux said sarcastically, past done with this idiotic side quest. He reached out and took hold of the top of the marker and wiggled it, attempting to pull it from the ground.

“What are you doing?” Poe asked, grabbing Hux’s hand firmly to stop him just at the point the marker started to inch out of the dirt.

“What? It’s made of metal. It could be useful to us . . .”

“It’s a _grave marker_ ,” Poe said, pushing Hux’s hand off of the little plate with a lot more roughness than he’d displayed at any other time, even mid-kidnapping.

Hux stood and crossed his arms over his chest. He’d thought maybe Poe might appreciate that he was being resourceful but apparently not. Apparently their survival wasn’t as precious as preserving a grave site that would likely never be found again by anyone but them on the way back. Poe also stood and, without looking back, continued on along the overgrown path they’d been following before. Hux heard him mutter, “I swear a droid has more feeling . . .”

Hux smiled at his back. Poe could have said this out loud if he’d wanted to. Hux took it as a compliment. 

* * *

“No, don’t!” Hux shouted, breaking a silence that had been nearly absolute since they’d left behind that tiny Jedi’s grave. He punctuated this warning by reaching over and slapping Poe’s hand away from his mouth. He’d had been about to eat a dark purple berry they’d found whose leaves resembled one of the shriveled bunches they’d been comparing to the foliage for the last half hour.

The berries flew from his hand and plopped wetly onto the mushy ground below.

“What was that for?” Poe asked, his tone a lot less cheery than it had been the day before or even that morning prior to Hux’s apparently _unforgivable_ behavior surrounding the grave marker.

“They could be poisonous,” Hux explained slowly, like he was talking to a five-year-old.

“Why would they have kept poisonous berries hanging near their cooking area?” Poe asked, waving the dried up bundle in the air near his own face.

“I didn’t say they did. But we don’t know if these are the same ones. Or if they need to be prepared somehow first. Some food will make you sick if you eat it raw but is fine once it’s been cooked.”

Poe stared at him for several seconds. “Suddenly you’re a master survivalist?”

“I read a lot,” Hux said. “Sometimes I cook . . .” he added wishing he hadn’t because it was an unnecessary and sentimental bit of information not important to their current task.

“Okay, Chef. How would you suggest we proceed then?”

Hux ignored the chef comment as it sounded more like an insult than the respectful title you’d give to an actual master of the craft. Which Hux wasn’t, it was just a hobby for him. One which he now realized he’d kept secret because he thought it was frivolous even though he liked doing it.

“Crush one in your fingertips,” he instructed.

Poe reached back for the plant cautiously, watching Hux like he half expected to get slapped a second time despite this being a necessary step in Hux’s instructions. He pulled a new berry off the stem and then pinched it until the skin broke and a small amount of red juice ran down the insides of his fingers.

“Put it against your bottom lip and hold it there.”

Poe started to obey and then stopped with the mashed fruit two inches from his mouth.

“What happens if it’s poisonous?”

Hux shrugged. “Something unpleasant I’d imagine.”

“Okay . . . and why am I the one doing this?”

“You were about to do it anyway,” Hux reminded smugly. “How about be grateful I didn’t let you poison yourself?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Poe said, like he might welcome poisoning after all. “That’s real generous of you.”

Hux sighed and pulled off his gloves, stuffing them into his pocket. He took a berry from the plant and crushed it the same way then moved his sleeve aside and pressed it to the pale inside of his wrist.

“If you can just do that, why did you tell me to do this?”

“That way’s faster,” Hux said. He rubbed his own berry back and forth a little, smearing its juice on his skin to show he was making an effort as well. 

“How much faster?” Poe asked, his hand still hovering.

“This way takes a good half a day,” Hux said, lifting his wrist for emphasis.

He must have been hungrier, stupider or braver—likely a useful mix of all—because Poe didn’t argue any more, just put the berry carefully to his mouth and waited.

“Don’t get any actually _in_ your mouth . . . yet,” Hux instructed.

After a good ten minutes Hux told him he could stop and Poe removed the berry. It had left a thumbprint-sized red stain on his lower lip. The color had settled into the creases of his lip in a way that made Hux stare for a few seconds too long.

“Well?” Hux asked.

“I don’t feel anything. Is that good?”

“So far. No tingling?”

“No.”

“Numbness?”

“Nope.”

“Burning?”

“If it had been burning me do you think I would have kept it on my face for that long?” Poe asked, sounding fully exasperated finally.

Hux clenched his jaw to keep a mean smile off his face. His honest, internal answer was a solid _maybe_ , but he was feeling magnanimous since Poe had taken the extra risk and chose to say nothing.

“Now what? Are these safe?” Poe asked.

“Maybe.”

“How do we know for sure?”

“I would think that was pretty obvious,” Hux responded, dropping his own berry and brushing the remainders off his skin as best as he could—an oblong red stain which mirrored the one on Poe’s mouth in size and shape was now tattooed on Hux’s wrist like Poe had transferred it there with a ki—

Hux shook his head sharply to erase that idea.

“Just . . . stick your fingers in your mouth,” he blurted, earning him an eyebrow raise from Poe. It had sounded unmistakably lewd both in tone and wording and there was no taking it back.

Poe parted his lips and Hux looked away before his fingertips actually entered his mouth, legitimately fearing he’d start blushing if he watched. Being very pale was a serious disadvantage in situations where he really needed to hide his emotions because any change in blood pressure changed his skin color dramatically. He had become very good at controlling this most of the time, but he was not in his own environment, not in command there. Everything felt loose, dangerous and _possible_. He preferred a world where only a very small set of things were possible, and he got to chose which happened. He felt a bit ill suddenly and checked his wrist to see if some kind of obvious reaction had started up there. There was nothing but that terribly suggestive stain, his skin flat and smooth underneath.

When nothing obviously bad seemed to happen to Poe after tasting the berry juice they collected a good amount of those and stowed in them in the bag, ditching the dried bunch of that particular plant and moving on. Poe actually ate a few of them as they searched for more potentially edible things, but Hux shook his head when they were offered to him. He’d wait until Poe definitely didn’t die in the next few hours before diving in that far.

They got lucky—if anything about their situation could be called that—when Hux found several plants he actually recognized and knew to be just fine including some fat, beige-colored seeds which could be dried and ground into a sort of flour. These were added to the bag with a strict admonition from Hux not to “crush it all into pointlessness” before they got back. Poe didn’t even react to this, his apparent new defense against Hux’s constant antagonism was to simply ignore all of Hux’s complaints, outright insults and more subtly sarcastic comments to just about everything Poe did.

They did go back to the ship eventually and found that it appeared to be in about the same position as it had the night before. Poe sat down on the bank of the pool and removed his boots. He rolled up the legs of his pants as far as possible before wading into the silt towards the half-hidden vertical wing of the TIE. He reached down into the water and came back with a handful of gummy, light green mud. Hux made a face, but watched as Poe used it to sketch a rough line just above the waterline across the length of the wing.

“Now we can check tomorrow and see if it’s changed,” he explained, wading back to shore.

Hux hadn’t needed this explained to him, but he had nothing to say to this plan as it was admittedly a fairly good one and he wasn’t about to say that.

Poe didn’t seem bothered by this, now dealing with Hux the way you would an actual droid—a robot companion who only assisted when needed by its master. Although Poe probably treated droids better, Hux thought. He could clearly imagine Poe patting a droid on the back and needlessly congratulating it on something despite the fact that anything a droid did was programmed into them and therefore not worthy of praise. He held this image in his mind, happily judging Poe for it even though it hadn’t actually happened that Hux had seen.

Aside from his silent judgement fantasy, Hux was passively agreeable all the way back to the hut from the ship, thinking about the books he hadn’t been able to look at that morning. He also judged himself a little bit for how interested he was in examining them. It was a dumb thing to care about given the circumstances.

They both went immediately about different tasks on returning. Poe started clearing out more of the debris and poking around on the thin strip of island outside looking for anything useful. Hux cleared the little stump that made a makeshift table and unloaded the stuff they’d found, sorting it carefully and trying to figure out how to turn it all into some semblance of a meal.

He cleaned all of the dishes he could find under the chilly water in the sink. They weren’t anything like spotless when he finished with numb fingers from scrubbing them under the water without soap, but they’d have to do. The fire had fizzled out hours before, and he spent a long time trying to get it to restart. He didn’t make any outward display of self-congratulation when he succeeded like Poe had done, but he did feel proud of himself for figuring it out.

He also ate some of the berries Poe had eaten, glancing towards the door first to make sure he wasn’t being watched, because he felt like giving into hunger enough to risk poisoning was weak and he didn’t want to be observed being weak. They weren’t fabulous and left a strange, tart coating in his mouth, but he felt slightly better after. There was a hook over the fire pit which he used to hang a pot of plain water over the flames, still not entirely sure what he intended to do with it.

He’d crushed some of those beige seeds ending up with a paste more than a flour due to them being too fresh to work quite right and then took the rest outside looking for a place to set them to dry out. There wasn’t anywhere with direct sunlight, and he took them back inside and set them in a neat little heap on the edge of the fire pit hoping the heat would help out.

He hadn’t seen Poe outside in the short time he’d been out there, and he tried not to admit that it worried him just the smallest amount. They didn’t know for sure that they were alone on the planet. Poe could have encountered some unfriendly alien species in the trees or been killed by a much larger swamp creature than those they’d seen already.

But he wasn’t. He came back soon enough and Hux regretted his concern—which he told himself was entirely selfish and not about Poe’s safety but about not being left alone there himself—when Poe crawled back into the living area looking significantly cheerier. It seemed insane to Hux that anyone could actually be enjoying this awful situation in any way, and if Poe made any sort of positive comments about really anything, Hux thought he might snap and try to fight him a second time. Except that the first attempt had ended so awkwardly and creepily on Hux’s part. He forcefully dismissed the memory of how he’d involuntarily enjoyed Poe’s body covering his for those few seconds and focused back on his sad “cooking” chore.

He added a handful of some mushrooms he was mostly sure were safe into the water along with an herb he was more sure about and left it alone. He mixed more water into the four-y paste and tried—not very successfully—to form it into a ball which he placed, like the seeds, directly on the side of fire pit to bake—or, rather, to turn into a half burnt, half raw clump it turned out.

He didn’t offer any of this directly to Poe once he’d done as much as he could to it all, but he left exactly half of it sitting out when he took his own portion to the table. He set the dish with his food down and went to flip through the books. Almost like he might have done back on the ship, looking for something to read while eating—only there he would have used a screen and a search engine. He tried to brush off the strange sense of disconnection he was feeling about his real life. It had only been a day, but this place—and his unwelcome companion there—were just so _different_ than his life on the Finalizer that it was hard to make both of them seem like reality at the same time. One had to be a dream and since he needed to stay in the present to live long enough to get back to the other, the other became the dream, retreating the way an actual dream does in the minutes after waking. Everything on board his ship was becoming just blurry scenes and confusing memories of half conversations. It was possible he was just disoriented from hunger as attempting to correlate the two worlds felt nauseating in a way which couldn’t have been entirely mental in origin.

He took one of the books without looking inside of it and returned to sit on the floor next to the stump. There was no other option for seating, as the miniature boulders the former owner of this house had used—was his name Yudo? No, Yoda—were much too small to be in any way comfortable for an adult human to perch.

Poe was sitting about where Hux had fallen asleep the previous night, staring out of the door looking wistful and relaxed. Hux found it distracting that Poe hadn’t gone to get food for himself even though it was clearly finished being prepared. He couldn’t even pay attention to the book because of it, sitting there waiting for Poe to move.

Finally he cleared his throat twice, not wanting to actually have to speak to him, until Poe looked up.

“That’s . . . yours,” Hux said, nodding towards the cooking area where the remainder of the food wasn’t getting any tastier but definitely a lot colder.

“Oh thanks,” Poe said, sounding genuinely grateful although, seriously, did Poe think he was that terrible that he’d use the food they’d both gathered only for himself?

He remained distracted while Poe went about gathering his own food and wasn’t able to really look at the book until Poe had settled himself on the opposite side of the table from him. Hux exhaled heavily and flipped the tome open to the first page. It also wasn’t in a language he could read he was disappointed to find, but he kept turning the pages anyway and encountered a few pictures among the text which were hand drawn with some skill and were—

“What’s in that one?” Poe asked, interrupting what had almost been a pleasant moment for Hux despite the mystery of the words and blandness of his meal.

“Nothing,” he said shortly.

“I was intending to eat by the way,” Poe said.

“Good for you.”

“I was just thinking.”

More like he’d wanted to force Hux to offer.

“I found a cave just back there in the trees,” he went on, annoyingly unperturbed by the fact that Hux hadn’t looked up from the book at all. Perhaps people didn’t read on his home planet, and he didn’t know it was considered rude to talk to them while they were doing it.

“Fascinating,” Hux said dismissively, turning a page to find a new illustration of—

“I’m thinking this may have been some kind of Jedi hideout or training ground.”

Hux looked up. “What makes you think that?”

“Just a feeling,” Poe said, shrugging.

“Oh, well, _that’s_ the best evidence there is . . .”

“You’re a real pain in the ass,” Poe observed mildly, like Hux was the human equivalent of the kind of mid-summer thunderstorm which ruins otherwise pleasant afternoons outside. 

“Says the man who kidnapped an innocent bystander for his own selfish purposes and then crash landed them both on some foul planet in heaven knows what solar system to eventually probably starve to death . . .”

“Innocent, huh? Do you think you’re the good guys?” Poe asked sounding honestly curious.

“You don’t know a thing about me.”

“I know enough,” Poe answered confidently. 

Hux shut the book and set it on the floor between his feet.

“Enlighten me. This should be adorable.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Poe countered.

“About us being ‘the good guys’? I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean. Define good for me, and I’ll be happy to answer you.”

Poe paused, considering his own hands for a few moments like maybe a good definition could be written there in their lines.

“People who take care of each other, I guess.”

“People aren’t predictable, you can’t base an entire concept on their behavior. Especially not something as vague as what you’ve just said. I definition needs to be objective.”

“Do you have a better one?”

Hux had been anticipating this question when Poe inevitably failed to properly explain himself and immediately said, “Good, in this this usage, is what’s best for everyone.”

“Okay, then by your definition, the First Order is good?”

“I wouldn’t bother with that sort of language but, by that definition, sure. We seek order. Order means stability and stability is ‘good’ for everyone.”

“ _Order?_ Kidnapping and mass murder is orderly?” Poe said fearlessly.

“I don’t what you’re talking about.”

“Really? Don’t you have a faceless pack of genocidal soldiers you fly around on that big, shiny ship of yours terrorizing everyone you come across?”

“Everyone? Hardly. Just the ones causing _disorder_ ,” Hux said feeling he was doing better in this conversation at making sense and having a clear point of view.

“So like us?” Poe asked.

“You mean the Resistance?”

“Yes.”

“Then I suppose not,” Hux said, pleased that Poe had wandered directly into an area where Hux had ultimate deniability in regard to Order harassment of a group of people during his time in command. “I mean, I assume you have an utterly unmolested base somewhere from which you operate your little club without interference. No stormtroopers have marched in to burn down your home and break all your toys recently have they?”

“No, but—”

“You’re beneath my notice,” Hux said calmly.

“You’re scared,” Poe said, not mocking, but sounding secure in his words.

“What? Of you?”

“Of us. Of what we mean for people like you.”

“Which is what exactly?”

“Freedom.”

“Freedom is dangerous the way you think it should be,” Hux said forcefully. This was something he truly believed. People governed by their own feelings, as Poe had just admitted he was, were headed for disaster, no exceptions.

“How do you know what I think about freedom?”

“I know all sorts of things about you, Poe Dameron. Your shenanigans have made you ‘famous’ enough to warrant in a file in our databank. A small one, but still.”

“I’m flattered. What does it say?”

“Poe Dameron, human male, age 32, Born on Yavin 4 to a sergeant and lieutenant—both of whom were important to the rise of the New Republic. Your mother was a pilot as well and you—”

“That’s just history, not my philosophy,” Poe said, sweeping his arm to the side like he was brushing dirt off a table onto the floor. “Although, I’m even more flattered now that I know you took the time to memorize everything about me,” he said, resting his head in his hand and leaning on the edge of the table in an extremely disarming way.

“I didn’t _memorize_ anything. I have a nearly perfect recall of facts. That’s not the same thing,” Hux said, feeling cornered and itchy under Poe’s comebacks.

“Good, because it’s _a_ _fact_ that the First Order is nothing but a terrorist organization bent on an unjust and unwanted control of everyone in the galaxy so file that away for later recall,” Poe said with surprising bite.

“The New Republic’s propaganda is very effective I can see.”

“I was briefed about the Order’s activities, that’s true, but I’ve had enough personal experience with your fleet and its mindless adherents since then to draw my own conclusions about you.”

“Let’s not get into a fight about who has more _mindless_ people trailing around after them, you’ll lose that one,” Hux said, the corner of his mouth twitching downward in a sarcastic expression he didn’t try to hide.

“You’re probably right. Our side doesn’t need to spend a lot of time coming up with convoluted justifications for our actions and if just living as a good person without complicated ambitions of conquering everything in sight is ‘mindless’—and I’m fairly sure that’s what you meant—then, yes, you win. Congratulations. You’re all very ‘thoughtful.’”

“Please. The world isn’t so black and white. Facing the grey and making objective decisions based on more than one’s ‘feelings’ is difficult, but necessary. Not for everyone, though,” Hux said, hoping Poe caught that he meant this kind of complex view of morality was for people like Hux and not for people like Poe and his friends.

“Whatever keeps you warm at night, General.”

“As usual, I don’t know what you think you’re talking about,” Hux said, a heavy weight on his chest like he was still wearing that bulky TIE pilot vest. He did know what Poe meant, he just refused to acknowledge it.

“I wish I could say that surprised me, but it doesn’t,” Poe said, an unmistakable touch of sadness in his voice and absolutely coming from him in waves like a noxious smell.

Poe was calling him lonely and suggesting nobody cared about him enough to be there when the lights when out at the end of his day. Hux had nothing available as a ready defense against this accusation as it was more personal and much ruder than anyone had ever dared be with him before since rising through the ranks of the military following the end of his schooling. He only had Kylo in terms of human connection and “if only you knew about the batshit crazy, sword-wielding maniac I fuck sometimes” wasn’t nearly close to what Poe was talking about.

After a long enough time had passed that Hux was sure he could do so with a small amount of grace, he rose, carefully so he didn’t hit his head on the ceiling, and went outside.

It was getting dark already and he sat out there until it was truly black, watching the ground fog creep back in and cover his legs and the edge of the island making the whole forest seem like it was growing from a cloud bank.

Poe came outside after a long time and sat down next to him— _right_ next to him, their shoulders nearly touching. Hux might have pushed him away or walked away himself the day before but what was the use of that? Poe had managed to hurt him, and Hux would face that as pragmatically as he did everything else about himself. It was pointless to blame another person for your own feelings, and he didn’t blame Poe for his own pain. If a relationship was a thing he’d wanted, he could have had it. Maybe. It wasn’t a thing he’d dwelled on ever and there was no reason to begin doing that now.

“Sorry,” Poe said.

“Why? You were right.” The darkness felt like a safe place to say something like that. It swallowed this admission without judgement and made Hux feel not better, but lighter at least. “Don’t ever be sorry about being right. Even if it’s awful to be so. There’s your first lesson on living in the grey, Poe.”

“What’s the second?”

“Don’t say everything that comes to mind.”

“Oh, trust me, I don’t.”

“This is you holding back then? I hope I never meet you while you’re being verbally careless with your thoughts. You have zero restraint.”

“I haven’t even come close to punching you yet so I would say I have quite a bit of restraint actually. You on the other hand . . .”

“A momentary lapse,” Hux said. He eyed Poe briefly, the light coming from the doorway behind them was illuminating his cheek which had a few scratches on it, visible even in the semi-darkness. “Did I do that?” He asked, pointing to Poe’s cheek.

Poe put his hand up and felt his face not just on the one cheek but all over.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen a mirror yet so I don’t know what’s new. Your troopers and your buddy in the dress did most of it, though.”

Hux snorted, not quite a laugh, but very near it. Kylo would have been legitimately murderous over hearing his precious, billowing robes referred to this way, and Hux had always been amused by Kylo’s complete lack of self-awareness regarding his own melodrama.

“Kylo,” Hux supplied. “And he’d kill you for that.”

“For what?”

“Calling his outfit a dress.”

“It is a dress.”

“It is kind of,” Hux agreed, enjoying the act of mocking Kylo from far away where he couldn’t hear either of them. He’d certainly caused enough trouble for Hux in the past to deserve it. “He’s got pants on under it—” he started and then stopped again abruptly. It wasn’t a good idea to start babbling about what was going on underneath Kylo Ren’s robes or how much of it Hux had seen firsthand.

Poe either didn’t pick up on the significance of this truncated comment or at least pretended not to and they reverted to silence for a few beats until Poe added, “Killing someone for making fun of your clothing suggests a pretty big lack of restraint . . .”

“You’ve just described Kylo almost perfectly, unfortunately. If you think _I’m_ a pain in the ass . . . you have no idea.” Now that he’d started criticizing Kylo out loud, it felt so good he was afraid he’d get carried away with it.

“I think I have _some_ idea,” Poe interjected patting his own cheek again. “He did sort of kick the shit out of me for a few minutes.”

Hux stiffened at this reminder and how he’d stood outside listening to and indirectly enjoying it while it happened. When was that? Three days ago? Only two? It didn’t matter really. It was on the other timeline making when it had happened not particularly relevant.

“Did he actually hit you? With his body?” Hux asked. This wasn’t Kylo’s usual style. He usually only hit things directly with his lightsaber, preferring to only come into contact with other beings through the Force. Hux being the one exception Hux knew about.

“What do you mean ‘with his body’?”

“He usually relies on his Force abilities for things like that,” Hux explained.

“He tortures people often then?”

“Usually just those of us who have to live on the ship with him . . .” Hux said, knowing he needed to stop, but too intoxicated by this freeing moment of uncharacteristic unorthodoxy currently to slow down.

“Wait, literally?” Poe asked, sounding extremely hesitant about getting an answer to this.

“Oh. No, not really. He has a temper, yes. But usually he just takes it out on my consoles and furniture . . .”

“And you put up with that? That doesn’t seem like your style, I hope you’ll forgive me for saying. Not saying I know you, but . . .”

“You’re right. It isn’t. And it’s complicated with Kylo. He’s not really under my comm—” He stopped for real that time. He’d let his guard down too much to the point that he was about to start blabbing on about First Order power structures to a literal member of the bloody Resistance. That life may have been the dream one for now, but it was only a matter of time before it became very real again and he’d like to go back to it knowing he hadn’t fucked up innumerable things for the Order in his time away.

“I’m tired,” Hux said, rising and going back inside without waiting for Poe to respond. Poe followed him but didn’t attempt to engage him in conversation other than offering the bunk again which Hux refused a second time. He sat back at the table and retrieved the book from the floor, opening it and bowing his head to study it like he would be expected to pass a test on its contents later.

Poe got the message that time apparently and retreated to the bunk without speaking again. Hux shut the book and turned off the lights after less than a minute. He didn’t need to put on a show of pretending to be interested in a book he couldn’t read. Not for Poe who didn’t seem impressed by anything.

He reached up and unsnapped the collar of his flight suit, pulling the zipper down to his waist and freeing his arms. It felt good to have it off finally, but he wouldn’t leave it that way in the daytime.

He lay down and found his eyes drawn to a few small pinpoints of brightness in the dark not far away. It took a few more seconds of his eyes adjusting to the gloom before he was able to identify them as reflections on the two helmets they’d worn leaving the Finalizer. They were sitting cheek to cheek against the wall directly across from him. He couldn’t have told which one he’d worn even in the daylight. They were identical, faceless black shrouds, intended to conceal and dehumanize like Kylo’s mask did—even though his was unique, it still took these same things from him when he put it on. Hux had seen it happen in real time, saw the way Kylo’s posture changed as soon as the face plate clicked into place and the speaker which altered his voice reactivated. The mask made him someone else, someone capable of things you needed to lack humanity to accomplish.

Hux had worn no mask before, he’d done his deeds—ones Poe might label evil and some maybe good as well—all bare-faced and, he’d always felt, with far more honesty than most people ever did anything. He’d never felt the need to hide. Poe had forced that anonymity upon him when he’d made him put on the flight suit, forcing Hux into a position of equality with him that Hux hadn’t entirely regained when he’d removed the helmet after the crash.

He turned away from the helmets, not liking the idea that the one he’d been made to wear may have had the same kind of transformative effect upon him that Kylo’s had for him. Hux wasn’t different, just misplaced for the time being. He’d get back. Back to his ship and command, back to the occasional company of Kylo Ren in his bed, back on his way to becoming emperor like he’d always believed—no, _known_.

Back to where knowing was power and no one had words which could wound him or with simplistic observation expose him to the airless embrace of uncertainty.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the point in my draft where I was like, “Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. I just wanted to write some filthy, easy smut here. What is this complicated feels business you’ve got going on, boys!? Just . . . just hate each other like you're supposed to and then fuck against a tree like normal enemies.”


	4. Try to Be Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is a lyric from the delightfully silly New Orleans-based hip hop Bounce song "My Boy" by Kourtney Heart and Magnolia Shorty. It's on the recommended playlist for this fic for lyrical reasons (and because I love it). Don't listen to it unless you want to never stop listening to it.

They returned to the ship the following day. Hux had woken first and rezipped his flight suit, grateful to not have been found on the floor half-dressed and vulnerable to an unknown gaze. Not that he thought Poe would have checked him out as thoroughly as Hux had done with him. 

They’d eaten a thin breakfast of berries and another flatbread—more successful that time due to the seeds being drier before starting out.

The tension between them was just as strong as it had been previously, but it had also slipped sideways into a different new kind Hux had no name for but which made him nervous.

It hadn’t rained that night the way it did the first night and the ground was harder, the underbrush easier to navigate as they made their way back to the crash site. The pool the TIE had been half-submerged in before was lower, a good six inches of the wing below Poe’s mud line now exposed. He seemed pleased, but Hux didn’t see how this mattered particularly since the ship was still tilted wildly to one side and the part which was below water must have been mostly steeped in mud because the water was only calf-height when Poe again removed his shoes and waded out to the ship.

Hux stayed on the shore, shifting around uselessly, while Poe examined the ship. After a good ten minutes of this he became impatient and called out, asking for a status report.

“Come see for yourself, I’m not one of your incredibly thoughtful stormtroopers,” was the irritating response to this.

He waited another five minutes after Poe had disappeared into the actual body of the craft before finally taking his boots off and stepping into the pool to do what had been suggested. The mud had a grainy, warm texture that was somehow more repellant than simple cold lake mud would have been, and he tried to ignore this as he went, not entirely successfully, uttering a number of high credit swearwords before getting there—some of them directed at the mud and the swamp in general and some also at Poe though he wasn’t outside to hear them.

He had two options when he got there for getting around to the front of the ship: One, duck under the triangle space where the wing attached to the body above the waterline or two, go all the way around the giant disc of the wing to the open door on the other side. He chose the second after imagining the ship suddenly deciding to shift while he was under that armature and drowning him under its weight. It wasn’t like he could get much muddier from the knees down as long as it didn’t get any deeper.

He had a strange moment of panic once he’d reached the center point of the wing while surveying its massive size rising out of the water into the trees above. He’d been walking with one hand resting on the textured black panels, but they offered no real handholds. If he did encounter a deep, underwater hole he’d have nothing to grab onto to pull himself up and maybe Poe wouldn’t even hear him on the other side if he shouted. Getting to the center was a trek at any rate wading through the thick, grabby mud underfoot—even if Poe heard him and came to help, Hux could drown this way as well just as easily as going the other way he’d rejected which now seemed inviting by comparison.

Standing there frozen next to the ominous expanse of the wing reminded him of something he did sometimes when he was alone in his quarters. Usually it was a thing he only did on the rare occasions he drank and it was late enough he could be sure to not be interrupted by anyone as it put him into a psychologically vulnerable position it would be difficult to recover from in order to speak coherently to anyone right away. He’d set aside his glass or screen or anything else he happened to be holding and climb barefoot onto the sill of one of the large windows in his front room so he was standing with the vastness of space at his feet and nothing between him and that endless dark but a spotless span of glass. He’d press his hands and face to it and then lean his whole body against the cool, transparent surface and imagine it giving out unexpectedly. It wouldn’t, of course, it was incredibly thick and well sealed around the edges, but . . . what if it did? What would it feel like to fall out of a window in space? He knew he wouldn’t actually _fall_ in the traditional sense, or be alive long enough to really take note of much about his expulsion from the ship, but standing there looking down past his feet with his cheek pressed to the window, it looked like it _was_ possible to fall and the thought was dizzying and morbidly exhilarating—falling into a something that had no bottom to kill you after you’d run out of breath to keep screaming on the way down. He didn’t know why he did this, just that the fear it conjured was . . . interesting. His life had been remarkably cushy for someone who’d been involved, however distantly, in war for all of his adult life, and initiating this discomfort with his own mortality felt powerful. 

That vast expanse of black wing, segmented the way some of the Finalizer’s windows were into smaller shapes even looked a little bit like space the way they reflected the light in little chips here and there imitating stars. He paused there, for how long he didn’t know, facing the wing with his hands and face pressed flat to its surface like with his bay windows. The effect wasn’t really the same given that the wing wasn’t transparent and if he fell through it he’d just land safely in the shallow water and mud on the other side—probably to be laughed at by Poe. He sighed and started moving again, shifting his feet forward cautiously rather than lifting them to avoid any holes or other unseen dangers possibly waiting down there.

He was greeted with, “Well, hello, Your Highness, nice to see you in the trenches with the common folk,” by Poe in a cheery voice when he did make it to the other side, and his memory of standing at the ship’s windows morphed into a fantasy of pushing Poe out into space and watching him float-fall away until he vanished.

“Did you find out anything?” Hux asked, deciding to take the high road—at least out loud.

“Eh, it doesn’t look too bad, actually. I think the fire was just the fabric on the seats mostly and that went out. These are built really well,” he complimented, which Hux absorbed proudly, even though he’d had nothing to do with designing or constructing them. He’d overseen their upkeep, insisting on regular checks and upgrades making it a compliment to his command whether or not Poe had meant it as one.

“Come see,” Poe said, his grinning face appearing under the curved edge of the partially open cockpit door. The height of the entrance turned out to be higher than it had looked from the other side due to the angle it had landed, and the front of the ship was facing diagonally into the canopy of trees. Surveying this configuration made Hux feel uneasy as he didn’t recall having had to jump any number of feet to escape the ship. He didn’t remember the process of getting to the shore at all either or really anything leading up to the crash except Poe informing him that it was going to happen.

It bothered him that he couldn’t remember escaping the crashed TIE. He’d always relied heavily on his own memory and rarely found he’d recalled something incorrectly. Having it fail him in such a dramatic manner about an event that recent was disturbing, like suddenly forgetting his own first name.

He needed Poe’s help to reach the interior of the ship which he didn’t actually enter when he got there due to his feet being coated in that same light green mud Poe had used to mark the wing. He noted that Poe had managed to clean his own feet somehow before entering and Hux gave him a begrudging point for taking the time to do it—now when they did get free, they wouldn’t have to take the musty wet stink of this place with them into space.

Hux sat on the edge of cockpit with his feet dangling—which felt a bit foolish but which he couldn’t do anything about—and listened to Poe pointing out his findings. He thought the engine was fine, pointing out that the lights worked, and guessed it might have simply been a momentary loss of power due to being too far into space for too long and not being properly charged by any nearby suns which had caused the failure. Those black plates Hux had been pressing his face to were solar panels which made the ship a bit of a marvel in that it needed traditional fuel only to start its engines and could run on solar power after that as long as all other systems remained operational. He asked Poe about the fuel levels, partly to show that he knew exactly how the ship worked and partly to test Poe’s own knowledge about it. He would never admit it, but he usually ran a tally in his head of how much more he knew about everything than people around him in just about every situation. He was usually ahead which was good because he preferred always winning even if it was at some—admittedly childish—game no one else knew they were playing with him.

“We’ll have enough to get going,” Poe reported immediately showing he’d already checked it. “It’s the solar power I’m worried about. These things are getting almost no light here thanks to the—” he pointed first to the wings and then upwards at the thick, overlapping branches instead of saying it. Even in the middle of the day, you couldn’t see a spot of sky. The light that filtered down was a grassy-colored, weak sort of light that made it feel like it was always twilight from sun up to sun down.

“But,” he added, “I really think if we can free that wing we’ll have a good chance of getting it out of here and back in the air.”

Hux didn’t feel the relief he’d wanted to feel over this news, and he saw that Poe’s reaction to his own statements appeared mixed as well. There was only one ship, and they would be interested in vastly different destinations once they did get airborne. Hux felt sure that Poe wouldn’t attempt to carry on with his initial, out-of-necessity, kidnapping now, but they couldn’t exactly split the ship in two and go their separate ways. It wasn’t a problem for that day anyway. Who knew how long it would even take them to dig the ship out? A week? Two? Heaven forbid, _months_. At any rate he was glad he wouldn’t have to immediately think about the decision over _where_ they’d go if they ever got going at all.

“And look,” Poe said, his hand suddenly in Hux’s face holding something for him to see. It was a small foil packet. A freeze-dried ration packet. _Of course!_ This was a _special forces_ TIE fighter. It was made for longer-range trips, recon missions, and if it had been fully stocked when they’d left—something Hux was fairly certain it would have been—that would mean it had a pretty good supply of these packets on board. There were a few other features about the ship that it was very possible Poe was unaware of given that this model was new, only put into the air maybe five years previously and none had been lost yet in a battle or captured by the Resistance. Which would mean they had no idea of the one thing about the ship that could save them both now. He almost opened his mouth to expound on this to Poe, his desire for intellectual superiority making him forget to follow his own second rule that he’d given Poe the night before: don’t say everything that comes to mind. It might turn out to be the thing that could turn this all around in Hux’s favor at some point and while they’d have to work together to reach that juncture, it would likely depend on Poe not knowing about it until then.

Hux grabbed at the packet, tearing it open with his teeth once it was in his hands, not caring that his enthusiasm looked pathetic. He didn’t even care what was inside of it—these were designed to be a compact, perfect source of nutrition which was both welcome in general and would be needed if they were going to be engaging in what promised to be some fairly strenuous physical labor over the coming days. They wouldn’t manage that on berries and Hux’s pasty, barely edible flatbread.

He heard Poe laughing at him but ignored this because it honestly didn’t matter. His recollection of the TIE’s special capabilities had put him in a very good mood.

Poe was sitting in the pilot’s chair, also eating from one of the same foil packets and looking far too content for Hux’s liking. Hux let it go though until Poe actually said, “See? This isn’t so bad . . .” but even then he only gifted Poe with an annoyed look, cast back over his shoulder with his head turned as far as it would go without him becoming an owl in the process.

Poe theorized that they wouldn’t get much done that day—which was fine with Hux as eating something more solid had made him feel weirdly exhausted afterwards—given that most of the light part of it was already gone and there was still too much water surrounding the wing to be able to clear the mud away. It would just slump back into place if they tried to move it aside at this point. Poe also said he felt confident that the water level would continue to drop and that this pond was the result of heavy rains and not likely there year round. Hux could tell when someone was offering just enough information to pique someone’s interest, but not enough to truly inform, forcing them to ask, but he didn’t think Poe’s methods were that sophisticated and decided he didn’t care to even know why Poe was so sure this mud hole was a temporary fixture.

They collected as many of the packets as they could fit into the little bag they’d gathered berries in and took along a few small metal cases they could sort through back at the hut. One was for sure a medical kit.

Poe made a new mud line on the wing as they both went around it on the way out. Hux could have helped with this and made the task go a lot faster, but that would have required him to stick his hands into the mud which he wasn’t about to do until it was absolutely unavoidable. He pretended that carrying one of the metal cases was taking all of his concentration though Poe was also holding one and hampered as well by the now overstuffed bag.

They carried their boots back as well rather than wearing them, moving barefoot through the now familiar underbrush, which Hux wasn’t fond of but which was preferable to putting his dirty feet back in his one pair of shoes and wrecking them.

One of the kits was indeed a medical kit and the other contained a number of things which would have been useful to a stranded pilot including a few small clothing items and—

“A razor?” Poe asked, holding up a little box containing a foldable straight razor and a can of shaving oil. “Why would your pilots need a razor? You make them shave in the middle of battles?”

Hux paused before answering, not wanting to reveal his knowledge of the TIE’s true purpose, but Poe didn’t sound suspicious, just amused.

“I like things orderly on my ship,” he said, and Poe laughed. He had a loud but not entirely awful kind of laugh that Hux was secretly pleased he’d said something to cause.

“Well, thank the Force for that,” Poe said, running his hand over his face the way he had outside when cataloging his injuries, only this time feeling the heavy stubble on his cheeks.

“Really? I thought this whole unkempt thing was some kind of . . . _look_ for you,” Hux said with an intentional note of disapproval in his voice, feeling he needed to take Poe down a notch after his own discovery of liking that he’d made Poe laugh.

“Not like you who has never spent _any time_ at all thinking about your looks . . .” Poe said.

“Are you trying to insult me by suggesting I care about my appearance? Because if so, it’s not a very good effort. It’s hardly a character flaw that some of us prefer to look like we shower more than once a year.”

“No, I get in at least two,” Poe said. “You know, when I’m not busy blowing up your stuff which is _a lot_.”

“Charming,” Hux said coolly.

“Glad you think so,” Poe answered popping open the razor case.

“I don’t. That wasn’t a compliment.”

Poe gave him a one-sided smirk in response that made Hux wish he’d managed to add more than one or two light scratches to that stupid smug face of his.

Hux went about putting away the food packets in a semi-orderly manner on a shelf near the fire pit while waiting for Poe to relinquish the razor. He took the little case from him and went to the furthest corner possible before using it himself, feeling self-conscious about not having a private place to perform this ritual. There was a small mirror in the lid of the case, and he was disheartened by his own appearance at first. There was a wary, desperate look in his eyes which he hoped wasn’t obvious to someone who didn’t actually know him. Shaving with a tiny mirror, only able to see a small portion of his face at a time, was difficult at first, but he decided it was better than having to see that unsettling look in his eyes the whole time he was working. He tilted the mirror back up for a moment when he was done, checking if what he’d seen before was just an illusion caused by the fractured reflection or if it had gone away now that he was aware of it. He decided it wasn’t as obvious as he’d first thought it was. His hair was a different story in regard to how out of sorts he appeared, being much more obviously revealing about how well he was adjusting to the situation which was very badly in his opinion. He managed to stop his hand before it reached his forehead to push aside the hair that had fallen across his forehead and pat down the strands sticking up wildly from the top of his head. Shaving could be excused as a matter of personal comfort, tidying his hair was—or could be—interpreted as something else. He shut the box quickly and stowed it back among the other things in the case, now aware in a way he wished he wasn’t of the unsatisfactory way his hair looked at the moment. He liked being _neat_ , and it had nothing to do with anyone else or what they might think about him.

Especially not anyone like Poe Dameron whose own hair wasn’t in much better shape. Except it didn’t actually look much different than when Hux had first seen him: basically, still a complete mess—like he did his hair by sticking it out the window of his X-Wing mid-flight. Gross. He glanced at Poe as he was thinking this and caught him running his fingers through his hair, pushing it up away from his forehead where it stayed, crowning his face in a dark, wavy mass that looked—

Stupid. It looked stupid just like his face.

Hux spent the rest of the evening outside by himself, sitting on the edge of the pool that surrounded their island until it got dark enough he felt he could try to sleep. He told himself he’d waited to go back inside because he usually did prefer to be alone when he wasn’t working and not because he suddenly felt vastly more uncomfortable than before with being crammed into that tiny house with Poe. He knew it was a partial lie, but he decided that maybe being fearlessly self-examining was—for now—something he could leave in his other life.

He rinsed his feet until they were as clean as they'd likely get in the milky swamp water and then rinsed his hands after that. He shook them in the air to dry them and then, while they were still slightly damp, he patted the hair on crown of his head with his palms and pushed his bangs to the side a little—not enough to look like an obvious effort, just enough to make _himself_ feel better.

* * *

As Poe had predicted, the waterline had dropped another foot overnight, exposing most of the pool’s bottom, but the mud around the wing was still water-logged and strangely heavy. Even though the pool drying up made their escape much closer, Hux was too annoyed that Poe was correct to rejoice about it. Poe was, of course, exuberant in a way Hux found undignified and a little arrogant. It wasn’t like he’d _made_ the water disappear. All he’d done was _guess_ correctly.

When they were almost back to the hut, Poe suddenly veered from their usual trail and started into the trees to the left. Hux stopped entirely.

“I want to check out that cave I found a few days ago,” Poe explained.

“You want to ‘check out a cave’? How _old_ are you?” Hux asked, squinting at Poe like he was covered in jam, playing with a toy version of an X-Wing.

Poe refused to be shamed for his interest, shrugging and turning his back on Hux without argument.

“Don’t come if you’re too ‘mature’ for it,” he called back, almost vanished into the trees already.

Hux followed along because what else was there to do? Also he didn’t appreciate being called old even though he’d started it.

He regretted his decision to go when the cave turned out to be much further from their already explored parts of the swamp, but he wasn’t about to turn back on his own, now disoriented and not trusting he wouldn’t get lost on the way.

Once they’d found it, Poe stopped at the entrance with his hands on his hips looking pleased and excited. Its entrance was small and partly concealed by the same kind of heavy brown vines that dominated the upper levels of the trees around them. Hux wasn’t sure how Poe had discovered it in the first place, but he felt this was a sign that he’d made the right choice in not trying to backtrack alone. Poe was much better at this sort of thing than he was, good at spotting things Hux wouldn’t have noticed. Hux supposed this was a skill Poe had learned from the seats of the planes he’d flown. The ability to spot small details and identify them quickly was a large part of what made someone a good pilot, especially one who engaged in midair firefights.

Poe stepped forward and pushed aside the vines preparing to actually go inside. A cold feeling of dread descended on Hux so swiftly he looked over his shoulder to see if some kind of freak snowstorm had started up in the middle of the swamp around them. There was nothing but the endless trees and their creepy, exposed root systems, looking exactly as they always did—rotten, sludgy and uninviting, but not snowy.

“What are you doing?” he asked, turning back to Poe, his tone harsh and betraying too much of his discomfort.

“I’m looking around, that’s why we came,” Poe said, sounding slightly exasperated. He looked back at Hux and then made a face when he saw Hux’s cautious, near fleeing stance. “What’s wrong?” he asked, straightening up, his hand still holding the vines away.

“I don’t know. This place is . . .” Hux started but trailed off, realizing that he wanted to say the area around the cave _felt_ strange, which was nonsense. “Nothing. This is just boring.”

Poe shrugged and turned away. He ducked again and entered the mouth of the cave. Hux hesitated for a few seconds and then followed, because that sense of wrongness felt even worse being by himself than it had with Poe still there. He pushed the vines aside using his sleeve and bent to peer into the space. His heart stuttered painfully when he saw Poe had vanished already, because there wasn’t any obvious place for him to have gone. The cave went straight back and ended after only about eight feet. He scrambled forward, his heart now beating with a disturbingly quick rhythm that made him feel he might faint.

He spun around once he’d stood up, the ceiling in the cave taller than its entrance suggested. He told himself he wasn’t checking to make sure the cave hadn’t sealed, but he was even though that made no sense. He thought about calling for Poe but didn’t trust that his voice would remain steady and Poe had already seen him looking scared once which was more than enough. He crept forward a foot and saw with a sickening sort of relief that there was a passage at the back of the space which just hadn’t been visible at first. The light was tricky in there, seeming to come from somewhere other than the cave’s mouth which looked dim and distant now even only a few feet behind him. Except it wasn’t just a few feet he noted with a newly birthed panic. It looked like it was maybe ten yards back and looked far too small to even be the opening he’d passed through coming in. He hadn’t come that far, he was sure of only taking a few steps. He let anxiety win then and opened his mouth to yell Poe’s name, hoping it would come out sounding mad and chastising and not terrified.

A very distinct crackling sound started up in the passage he’d found and a flickering red light began bouncing irregularly off the walls like a call and response to the sound. He’d witnessed the mechanics of Kylo’s lightsaber too many times to not immediately recognize it as the source. The tip of that flickering blade came into view a few seconds later confirming it and the presence of its master who appeared like a massive, black-winged creature from a nightmare, filling the mouth of the passage too completely for what Hux thought of as his usual size. His robes stayed in movement after he’d stopped walking—rather than settling back into place, they swelled as if there was a swirling wind lifting them from below and fanning the layers, enhancing the illusion that he was taking up more space than that which his actual body occupied under them.

Hux felt like the opposite was happening to him, that he was shrinking, retreating, vanishing in particles. It was not only this horrible sensation that upset him, but that he should have felt glad to see Kylo and didn’t. His presence meant Hux’s time on that unknown planet was about to end, but he didn’t feel comforted. If Kylo was down that, the only way to go in the cave, that would mean he’d already encountered Poe and no doubt dispensed with him. This idea distressed him unreasonably. He didn’t care if Poe died, it’s what he’d wanted since the moment of his abduction.

Kylo’s stance was one he used when going into battle, knees bent and arm drawn back ready to strike with that deadly, flaming cross, ending whoever was in its way. He was wearing his full helmet and mask, the silver accents on its face highlighted in red like the front was drenched in blood—probably Poe’s, but why so much? The saber didn’t draw blood the way a regular sword did.

Kylo shouted a word which took Hux a few seconds to register but which bounced terribly off the walls rebounding on Hux and sounding doubled up a multitude of times like there was an entire army of Kylos advancing on him. The word was _traitor_ , spit out with a level of viciousness which Hux had never heard from him before, not even while raging over his former Jedi master, Luke, who Hux knew Kylo for some reason hated more than any other person.

“No,” Hux said weakly. “I’m not. I haven’t done anything. I—” but he cut off, not knowing what kind of defense to give and also thinking it was too ridiculous for him to be having to explain himself to Kylo who was not his superior. He changed tactics, trying to regain his composure. He straightened his shoulders, trying to picture himself in his uniform, shoulders squared and stance authoritative. “It took you long enough to find me. Where’s your ship? We can go back now.”

“Go back where?” another voice asked, directly behind him.

Hux spun and found Poe standing at his elbow. Hux’s shoulders rounded at seeing him standing up and alive, but he couldn’t take the time to sort through his relief over this and what it meant that he was glad to find his kidnapper had not been murdered.

“You should run,” Hux instructed, knowing it wouldn’t matter and there was no place safe for Poe now on that planet, but unable to stop himself from giving the warning anyway.

“Why?” Poe asked, a sideways smile on his face, made a little strange by the look of concern that surrounded it.

Hux opened his mouth to point out what he felt should have been obvious—that Kylo would kill him, maybe kill them both but . . . there was no red light touching Poe’s face. The cave entrance was just behind him, as close and greenly illuminated as Hux had expected when looking for it just before Kylo had appeared. He turned back around slowly and found the cave as empty as it had been when he’d first looked in.

“You okay?” Poe asked, his hand actually coming out to rest lightly on Hux’s forearm.

Hux shook this touch off and turned, scrambling back out of the mouth of the cave into the vague light of the day outside. Poe emerged a second after, looking concerned still which made Hux feel silly and humiliated.

“What happened?” Poe asked, tilting his head a little, his voice tender, like he was speaking to a much younger person who’d just woken from a bad dream. Hux did feel exactly like that if he was honest with himself, but he wouldn’t confess this to Poe.

“Nothing. Nothing happened. Can we just go?”

“Sure,” Poe agreed in a way that sounded like it was intended to soothe, as tangible as if he’d reached out and brushed Hux’s cheek with his fingertips.

Hux stomped away into the trees, so desperate to get away from the cave and Poe’s soft attentions that he wasn’t thinking any more about getting lost. Poe caught up with him and went ahead, correcting the course Hux had been on without saying anything.

Hux cut in front when they got back to the hut and went directly to the sink to gulp water, forgetting to even use a cup, just filling his hands with the icy liquid and drinking directly from his palms. He pressed his freezing, wet hands to his face afterwards and found they were vibrating slightly. He couldn’t recall ever being as frightened as he’d felt in those few seconds of confrontation with Kylo. It was fear for his own life, he thought. It wasn’t connected to the surety that Poe had been killed, but that wasn’t entirely true and this new habit of forcing himself to lie about things that were happening made him feel sick and like he might actually throw up. He turned his head to check if Poe was watching him because he wasn’t so far gone that he could not care if Poe saw him being sick that way.

Poe wasn’t in the hut. He was there, but outside, kneeling at the entrance with one hand up on the top curve of the doorway. He didn’t look as kindly worried as he had before. His face was uncharacteristically unreadable, features set like a statue, the illusion so absolute that it was a bit startling when he blinked.

“You saw something,” he stated, not leaving room for Hux to deny it, just insisting on it.

“No,” Hux said, denying it anyway. “I just don’t like small spaces.”

“I won’t judge you . . . that place was weird. You were right. We shouldn’t have gone in there.”

“I wasn’t right about anything,” Hux said, using a phrase he’d never used before and never expected to use again.

“But you know what I meant now, about this place . . .” Poe coaxed.

Hux’s shoulders sagged and he leaned over the sink, his hands slipping down into the basin.

“Yes,” he said.

“I’m not a Force user, but I’ve felt it from some who are. It’s strong here,” Poe said.

Hux nodded. He’d had plenty of indirect experience with that intangible sensation that Kylo referred to simply as “the Dark” but which the few references in the Finalizer’s databanks had labeled as “the Force” the way Poe did.

“It is,” Hux agreed. “But it’s different than what I’ve . . . felt before.” He hated being forced to use the word “felt” in reference to his own observations. He preferred having something to base his conclusions upon, not just the way he experienced the world through his emotions. He needed something he could see, touch, smell, not just _feel_ the way he did with Kylo’s Dark.

“Do you have other force users on your side?” Poe asked.

“You mean other than Kylo?” Hux asked, directing his question to the bottom of the sink, confirming that Poe was referencing Kylo.

“Yeah.”

“No. He’s the only one I’ve ever met with that . . . power.” Hux didn’t like thinking of Kylo’s abilities as power because he couldn’t pinpoint what the origins of it were and this bothered him. Hux’s idea of power was based on station, on proving oneself through work, on things you could write down on a list which totaled up exactly how powerful you were and in what ways. Kylo’s power was untrackable and mysterious and, Hux knew, greater than his own would ever be.

“We don’t have anyone like that,” Poe said. “General Organa has it, but she doesn’t use it the way your friend did on me.”

“He’s not my friend,” Hux said immediately, not expecting his own words. Then, “What did he do to you?”

“I’m not sure,” Poe said, coming into the hut now, but slowly. He sat on the floor, partially blocking the exit which made Hux tense again. “He got into my head somehow. It was like having a second brain only I couldn’t think with it. It could use mine, though, control it the way I do mine by just thinking . . . maybe that doesn’t make sense.”

“It does,” Hux said, thinking back to one time he’d angered Kylo and had this same takeover happen to him. They’d been arguing, alone in Hux’s bedroom, he couldn’t remember about what and then he was suddenly no longer in control of his own limbs or thoughts. Kylo had pushed him without touching him until his back hit the wall, and he was pinned there until Kylo released him. He recalled the feeling that his memories were being sorted through the way Hux looked up things in his datapad, only not as orderly. Kylo’s way was more like someone digging around in a box of spare parts. It was awful knowing exactly which things Kylo was seeing, feeling that examination as it happened, Kylo’s Dark wrapping around certain recollections and scanning them. Some were benign and unimportant like the exact taste of salt water candy and some were embarrassing like what Hux thought about when they fucked.

“So that’s why you let him get away with breaking all your shit?” Poe asked, his tone both amused and sympathetic.

Hux shrugged. It wasn’t that. Not entirely. He didn’t have a choice about Kylo’s presence in his ranks. And he hadn’t experienced Kylo’s power that way until years after they’d met and months after they’d become intimately involved. Poe was right in the way that feeling it personally had made him more careful about Kylo after that. They hadn’t slept together for weeks following that incident until Hux had managed to file the experience away sufficiently enough to be alone with him again.

“I don’t know,” Hux said in reference to his level of tolerance for Kylo’s tantrums. It wasn’t fear at first, and he was sure it wasn’t extra allowance based on their sexual relationship. It wasn’t like that with them. They were just killing time with each other, not anything more entangled and serious.

“You don’t want to talk about it any more,” Poe observed. Hux gave silence as an answer and it stayed for some time, floating in the air almost as “there” as Kylo’s Dark, only not oppressive. Almost like a still communication that both were adding to by not disrupting it. Poe had now seen him in a state no other person had since he was probably a very small child. It wasn’t something Hux could erase from Poe’s mind the way he was sure Kylo would have been able to do if he wanted. A few days before Hux might have wished for that power, for the ability to reach into Poe’s mind and crush out of existence Poe’s memory of Hux being afraid, but he knew he wouldn’t have if he’d been able to now. He was too distracted by a new far more upsetting thought that had formed around this whole event: the knowledge that no one actually knew him. Some of the people on his ship, among his higher ranking officers, had worked for or with him for nearly a full decade, seeing him and conversing with him daily in some cases, but they didn’t know him really.

The idea that now Poe Dameron knew him more than they did, in a real way, as unquantifiable as Kylo’s power, made him feel as stuck as the wing of their crashed TIE fighter, as lost as they both were on this unnamed, wild planet, but also found, _comprehended_. He’d never before considered that people were knowable the way the articles in his database were, full of details and images you could label and save and connect to each other. You couldn’t search a person, objectively studying them like a file, finding out about a person’s essential being was different, it required time and instinct and caring enough to allow for the process to happen over time. He flipped through what he knew about Poe, not the facts from the First Order’s official file on him, but the things Hux had learned by being near him, by listening to him talk, seeing his face when he reacted to things. He found he could easily recall lots of things as clearly as pulling them up on a screen—the look on his face when he was concentrating, the way he walked, his smell when they’d been close enough for that, the feel of Poe’s hand on his arm in that cave. That last sent a burst of warmth over his body emanating from the place on his arm Poe had touched and filling his chest like sunshine lighting on his face after stepping out from under a shadow.

Hux exhaled like he could expel that heat from his center by pushing it out his mouth as breath. He looked up and found Poe watching him closely, not even pretending he wasn’t, and he didn’t look away when Hux caught him. Poe smiled in a way that looked slightly sleepy—or not. Hux didn’t have a ready description for the expression. He wasn’t sure it was one he’d ever seen before, certainly it wasn’t one anyone had ever had while looking at him.

“You’re a strange guy, General.”

“It’s Aldous,” Hux said, offering up his first name without planning it beforehand.

Poe squinted at him with one eye. He made a little uninterpretable sound and said, “I think I like Hux better.”

“So do I.”

“Well, that’s possible then. Interesting,” Poe said, smiling again, wider this time, less dreamily.

“What is?”

“You and me agreeing on something.”

Hux scoffed. “Don’t get used to it. I don’t expect it to happen again.”

“I totally agree,” Poe said. “We’ll settle on those two, I guess.”

“I guess.”

Then silence descended again and stayed for most of the day as they moved around to eat, cleaned up a bit more, and mostly just sat, but Hux was always aware of that connection there. That feeling of being known and knowing about someone else. It was similar to the way he broke down and categorized all new information, fitting the facts into his previous knowledge like puzzle pieces only none of these would click nicely into place among his other ideas and memories—they were all dumped messily into a new type of mental hard drive, separate from everything else, one comprised entirely of his experiences with Poe Dameron and named after him as well. Not his full name like the file on the Finalizer but only with his first name. Just Poe. Just the things Hux knew from personal observation. Just the things he couldn’t have known by reading that other file.

Just Poe as he was, too close to Hux in that tiny house, too real in Hux’s mind as a person now to go back to seeing him as Poe Dameron the Resistance pilot who fought Hux’s faceless soldiers and reported to Leia Organa and knew other people in a way Hux only knew Poe.

When it had gotten dark, Poe offered the bunk again and this time Hux took it, climbing into the little space over the sink to sleep only sleep was a ways off still. He watched Poe, less guarded than he would have ever done before—watched him stretch out on the floor and close his eyes, not even concerned he’d be caught at it. He was adding to the Poe file, noting the way Poe’s face changed when he fell asleep, the way his hands relaxed against his chest in unconsciousness, the shape of one ear peeking out from under a a swirl of overgrown hair on the side of his head. He was grateful Poe was far enough away that he was prevented from fulfilling a mad desire he had to reach out and feel these things with his fingertips, adding the stable complexities of touch to his Poe knowledge, adding a dangerous realness to the whole thing and his feelings about it which were varied, dizzying and unnamable.

And welcome. As welcome as escaping that cave had been only this was like stepping into something not out of it. He went a little further, inching along like he’d done when exploring the cave only this was a non-physical exploration of himself and the lies he’d been clinging to since Poe had pinned him after the crash. He felt pinned again, as incapable of freeing himself as he had been even after Poe had released him, and he didn’t fight it. He untethered himself from his intentional self-delusion and sank into the muck of his feelings and admitted that his fear in the cave had been at least equally, if not entirely, fear over the thought of Poe dead and torn from his life leaving behind all of the stuff in his file for Hux to have to carry around heavily for the rest of his life with nowhere to ever set it down or forget it. He sank until it bubbled up and covered him when sleep finally did, like a sweet-tasting, breathable liquid that infused his cells with the surety that no matter what happened next, he would never be truly alone again, never lonely, never _unknown_ as long as his heart beat and his mind had the capacity to recognize the three letters which spelled out Poe’s name or the six which spelled his own.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couple things: 
> 
> The TIE in this story is a partial fabrication in regard to the way the solar panels operate and their color. The panels on the Special Forces TIE introduced in Episode VII are grey and not black like those in the original series, but obviously I needed them black to trigger Hux's window memory. Part laziness, part self-indulgence as I prefer the black ones. 
> 
> Hux's first name is a nod to the writer Aldous Huxley, both because his last name is similar and because Hux reminds me of someone who would exist in a book like Brave New World or its commonly associated sister book 1984. I'm a freaky fan of both books and dystopian societies in general.


	5. We're Not Strangers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took FOREVER to edit, and I still don't feel like it's entirely "right." But it works and I need to move on. Not to be dreary. It's an important chapter and needed extra attention.

It was strange waking up in that little space above the sink rather than on the floor and for a few seconds Hux forgot where he was—the little bunk too similar in size to where he’d slept at school in the dormitories. The feeling of being encased by walls, of having a ceiling too close to his face, and a vague sense of dread connected to having to open his eyes and face whatever day was ahead. 

He did open his eyes when he heard sounds near him. It was just Poe, of course, not a herd of the rowdy military brats he’d been forced to share space with for half his life to that point. Poe turned to look at him when he moved to sit up. He acknowledged Hux was awake without speaking to him which Hux appreciated because he didn’t ever feel like talking right after he woke up. Poe approached him and handed up one of the foil packets from the TIE along with a cup of water. Hux knew he should have given verbal thanks for this but couldn’t, his voice felt like it had gone offline.

Poe didn’t seem to mind when all Hux did was nod. He ate turned on his side, leaning on one arm, his legs curled up to fit. It wasn’t the most dignified position, but it was what was possible in the confined space available. He could have gotten up. He didn’t want to. Poe bringing him food seemed like permission to stay where he was without being rude and also like an acknowledgement that Poe understood the previous day had been trying and Hux might need time to adjust.

These were all assumptions based on nothing beyond feeling, but he accepted them as truth the way you don’t question gravity for dragging you to the ground when you trip.

Poe waited until Hux had finished eating before he spoke at all.

“I’m going down to the TIE to check the water level. You can stay here if you want. I can come back for you if—”

“No,” Hux said quickly. “I’ll go, too.”

He didn’t want to get up. Didn’t want to walk down and stare his imprisonment in the face again. But more than that he didn’t want to be alone. This was perhaps the strangest development, and it wasn’t about Poe necessarily, it was just that he pretty much always preferred being alone—not feeling that way, separated from any external cause, was deeply foreign.

Hux led the way back to the TIE, trying to travel in a way that looked sure, wanting to seem sure—about anything, not just the way to the ship.

The water was mostly gone, and the area around the TIE was squishy and dotted with little puddles. Poe walked back and forth examining the wing, and the mud surrounding, while Hux silently watched, feeling like he was waiting for instructions. It didn’t bother him like it would have before. There were two reasons for this, Hux thought. One being that he felt a bit . . . deflated, or wounded. He didn’t want to make decisions for once. The second reason was that he trusted Poe wouldn’t be demanding or unfair in what he asked Hux to do. Hux thought it was a rare man, possibly unlike any he’d previously known, who wouldn’t abuse even the smallest amount of authority over another person. He was sure about this in regard to Poe. Another foundationless new belief based on intangible sensations he couldn’t name or catalogue.

Poe climbed back into the cockpit and dug around for a few minutes while Hux stood below, flooded with an unusual type of patience he’d never experienced before. He wasn’t exactly in a hurry usually, but he liked things to stay moving, to remain efficiently clicking along at all times. Stillness was wasted time.

Poe dropped back to the ground next to him holding a bundle in his arms which he unfolded revealing it to be a parachute.

“We can dump mud onto it and then drag it away and put it somewhere else while we work. That way it won’t slide back into place,” he explained.

“That’ll be ruined when we’re done,” Hux observed mildly eyeing the thin fabric of the chute which wouldn’t save a pebble from dropping after it was coated with the sticky swamp mud.

“There’s another one in there,” Poe said. And then added after a slight pause, “This is the one from the pilot’s seat.”

Meaning it was Poe’s parachute and that he’d left the one in Hux’s seat alone. Hux knew that like the breakfast he should have thanked Poe but this was such an odd situation that he didn’t know what to say.

At first Hux just worked with his sleeves rolled up, still unwilling to wear half a flight suit around but by midday, sweaty and tired, he finally got over his reluctance about looking silly and unzipped the top half of the suit. He did this with his back turned so he wouldn’t see if Poe looked at him. He was sure he wouldn’t be gifted with the same kind of flattering once—or twice—over he’d given to Poe and wanted to allow Poe a few seconds to conceal whatever expression he did have so he wouldn’t have to spend time dissecting it for subtext.

Hux felt good, actually, while they were working. Being proactive about their situation was soothing even if it required methods he was unused to performing in general. He expected to feel pleased to step back and look at what they’d done when they quit but from a slight distance it didn’t look like much. It looked like they’d honestly just wasted their time. This was going to take longer than a day to finish, and judging by how little they’d moved, it would probably take longer than two.

The next day was harder than the first because now that the water was gone, the sandy mud had started to harden making it more of a chore to get the mud to the chute regardless of quantity taken.

It wasn’t until the middle of the third day of nearly ceaseless digging that Hux began seeing the kind of progress he felt comfortable with. There was now a large hole dug all the way around the trapped wing and they were going more slowly because the tilt of the whole ship, while stable when encased in mud, now seemed much more precarious. Tipping the whole thing over on its side would be a much bigger disaster than the mud had been. They’d never succeed in righting it if that happened. Poe suggested they might try digging around the other side as well to level the TIE out entirely rather than try to take off at an angle. Hux didn’t object to this idea. He’d started to view the project as a sort of personal trial. Every handful of dirt was him digging his fingers into his future, reclaiming his other life slowly. Leveling out the plane might feel symbolic in the same way. He didn’t have much use for symbolism in general, but this felt right.

They were sitting on the edge of their excavation eating, their legs dangling from the side, when Hux finally decided that it was time to confess what he knew about the TIE. The secret of it had started wrapping itself insistently around his thoughts the previous day and now felt like it was strangling his brain relentlessly. It was more a matter of easing this discomfort, he thought, than wanting to reveal it which led him to speak.

Poe was talking but Hux had been rudely tuned out and unresponsive while debating with himself whether it was wise to show the last card in his hand.

“Poe,” he said, interrupting something Poe was saying, the content of which he couldn’t have even guessed at, his hearing seeming somehow dampened, like was inside of a sealed tight glass box that separated him from the planet and its sounds. “This ship has a hyperdrive,” he said, the words all smashed together and uneven, like they were each fighting to be the most important as they exited his mouth.

His hearing returned to normal after the words were out, but there was silence from Poe, forcing Hux to turn his head for a visual reaction to this news. It turned out to be not surprise but a sort of giddy amusement.

“I know,” he said.

“But how? They’re new . . .”

Poe tilted his head, smiling widely until the corners of his eyes crinkled.

“I know how the old TIEs worked, and I had time to check this one out when I was looking through it the day I found the food.”

“Oh.”

“And you just let us drift through space unnecessarily for seven hours knowing we could have jumped instead . . .” Poe said shaking his head in mock chastisement.

“I wasn’t exactly anxious to get wherever we were going . . .” Hux said, not wanting to admit that he’d entirely forgotten it was even an option and also feeling this explanation was entirely reasonable and not something you could hold against a person. He had expected that Poe would be at least a little bit upset though.

“That’s fair,” Poe said, with a forgiving shrug.

“Why aren’t you mad?”

“Do you want me to be mad?”

“Not especially.”

“Okay then I’m not mad.”

“You’re not mad because I don’t want you to be?” Hux pressed, unable to accept that anyone, even Poe, was that agreeable.

“No. I’m not mad because I’m not. I just could have pretended a little bit if that’s what you wanted . . .” Poe said, grinning.

“I don’t know why I would have wanted that. That makes no sense.”

“You seem pretty keen on being hated.”

“What does that mean?” Hux asked, unsure if he should feel offended or not.

“It means if you sensed I was trying to befriend you, you wouldn’t like it. You’d probably think I was trying to trap you.”

“Could you blame me? You did kidnap me after all.”

“I prefer to think of it as ‘borrowing.’”

“Does that mean you’re planning to give me back?” Hux asked, his throat suddenly burning like someone had forced him to swallow a thorny vine and then yanked it back out sharply, lacerating him in a hundred tiny places from the back of his tongue to the center of his chest. 

“Why not? What would I do with you?” Poe said, shrugging again, his apparent nonchalance indicating Hux’s words hadn’t contained any evidence of the extremely painful sensation he’d experienced hearing Poe casually discuss releasing him this way. Like Hux was no more a person than the TIE fighter. Just another piece of First Order property he planned to ditch after it had stopped being useful to him.

“Are you _actually_ stupid?” Hux asked, his tone angry and disgusted, his voice rising in pitch without his control.

“I don’t think so . . .?” Poe said, raising an eyebrow.

“You know who I am, and you’re just going to _let me go?_ I would be an _incredibly valuable_ prisoner in a number or ways. You’d have to be an idiot to just—”

“Well, we can’t _all_ be as smart as you,” Poe said, in a tone that sounded like he was cheerfully rebounding the accusation of probable idiocy back at its owner. “Now _you_ sound mad though which, I’m sorry, seems insane. Are you mad because you thought you were a prisoner this whole time or mad because I don’t want to _take you_ as a prisoner?”

“I’m not mad.”

“You’re doing an excellent impression then.”

“I’m annoyed.”

“No, you’re _offended,_ ” Poe corrected, a laugh starting up in the center of the last word. “You’re pissed off I don’t think you’re fancy enough to bother taking you hostage a second time.”

“I am not.”

“Sorry, Dandelion. You’re just simply too much trouble.”

“One to talk! And don’t fucking call me that.”

“You’re welcome to tell everyone you murdered me and escaped singlehanded if you’re afraid this will make you look bad back on your ship.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Hux said, clenching his jaw in an effort to get his temper under control again.

“Well the offer’s open. Not to actually murder me, mind you. Just to _say_ you did. I won’t tell them.”

“I hate you so much.”

“Yeah, you wish you did,” Poe said, smiling at first but stopping when he saw that Hux had frozen in place at these words. He’d probably anticipated one of Hux’s swift, eviscerating comebacks, but Hux had nothing. It was too true. That new file named Poe made it impossible for Hux to hate him, but he _wished_ he could.

“Look,” Poe said. “This is an unfortunate situation. So let’s just let it go. We’ll find a neutral planet and you can drop me there and take the TIE back to your—”

“Of course I’ll take the TIE! You don’t need to tell me I’m allowed to take my own fucking ship! And you _are_ stupid. The First Order will hunt you down whether I come back or not, whether I want—” Hux stopped, he stood up from his seat on the edge of the pit feeling ill over what he’d almost said.

“We should be working, we’re wasting time,” he finished, dropping the remainder of his meal and heading back to the bottom of the wing where they’d left off to resume digging alone. He felt Poe watching him but didn’t turn around and didn’t speak to him when he rejoined the excavation.

* * *

He was woken in the middle of the night by Poe shaking his arm. He tried to sit up, forgetting the ceiling again and hitting his head against it hard enough to make his vision dim for a few seconds.

“Sorry,” Poe said. “You need to move over, though. It’s raining again, and the floor is wet.”

“What?”

“Just move,” Poe said, already climbing up into the tiny space next to him.

“There’s not enough room for us both!” 

“There will be if you _turn_.”

There really wasn’t enough space for both of them to curl up comfortably the way Hux had been before being woken, but there was enough for both of them to lay down on their backs with their legs dangling over the edge and their heads towards the back of the space by the window which showed that it was indeed raining again, at least as hard as it had their first night on the planet.

“See?” Poe said when he was settled. “Plenty of space.”

Hux was too sleepy to argue or otherwise verbally abuse him just then. He tucked his arms in as tight as possible to his sides and tried to go back to sleep.

“Is your head okay?” Poe asked.

“What?”

“You hit it when I woke you up,” he reminded.

“Oh. Yes, it’s fine, I guess. I mean, it was better _before_ I hit it, but I’m not dying.”

“That’s good . . .”

Hux made a snorting sound. “Right. You care.”

“I’m letting you go, aren’t I?” Poe said softly. “Even if it’s stupid. And you’re right. It is.”

Hux turned his head and found Poe was already in the same position, watching him, his face too close, too kind.

“I thought that was because I’m ‘too much trouble’?” Hux said, whispering so he only exhaled just barely enough to form the words, uncomfortable even with the idea of his breath on Poe’s skin, too possible at this distance.

“You are,” Poe confirmed. “Definitely too much trouble. But not as a prisoner.”

“Then what as?” Hux asked, carefully like he was inching forward in a dark maze, feeling along the wall to keep from getting lost in it.

Poe didn’t respond to that question, just watched Hux until he started to feel uncomfortable and shifted, showing it.

“You’re a lot less scary like this,” Poe said gesturing to him vaguely with one finger.

“Like what? Laying down?”

“No. Mostly it’s your hair, I think . . .”

Hux knew what he meant. Without the products he used to keep his hair neat and groomed on the ship, it fell across his forehead in a way that made him look several years younger and much less like a high-ranking military officer. He hated it this way.

Poe had reached out, his fingers got close enough to just touch Hux’s bangs before Hux jerked away, hitting his head again, this time on the wall next to him. Poe laughed, making him feel idiotic.

“Relax,” he said. “I wasn’t going to do anything to you. You’re not my type.”

Hux held his breath, refusing to turn his head and acknowledge these words or that he was injured by them. Nobody wanted to hear they weren’t attractive, even to someone they didn’t want being attracted to them.

“Just go to sleep,” he said instead.

“Yup.”

“And I do hate you by the way,” he added, the lie feeling almost true directed at only the ceiling, with his hurt over Poe’s words lending them a rare emotional weight.

There was a pause so long Hux was sure Poe had gone to sleep and was almost asleep himself when Poe spoke. Only two words, but they were the worst he’d ever heard and they kept him awake for a long time after, echoing in his head like a condemnation of his entire person, for being someone who could hate someone as generally amenable as Poe was.

“I know,” he’d said, his voice flat and distant and very unlike him.

* * *

 

 

Hux was aware of two things immediately upon waking. One: it was still raining. And two: the front of his body was much warmer than the rest of it. He opened his eyes very carefully, like they might actually make a sound, to confirm what he already suspected.

He’d had turned on his side at some point and draped his arm over Poe’s chest, tucking himself around him apparently quite comfortably, his fingers closed around the collar of Poe’s shirt so that the side of his thumb was actually resting in the hollow of Poe’s collar bone.

_Shit._

If he moved away suddenly, he’d wake Poe and have to face what he’d done. This had to be done incrementally, _slowly_. He managed it, he thought, pretty successfully with only one terrifying moment when the back of his thumb brushed Poe’s jaw as he tried to extricate his hand without really being able to see what he was doing.

When he was finally free he scooted away as silently as possible before turning onto his back. He swallowed hard, just glad he’d accomplished it withou—

But he hadn’t. Poe was awake and laughing very quietly.

“Fuck.”

Poe laughed harder, the sound irritating inside of the tiny space.

“Fuck you. We’re not talking about it,” Hux said, his eyes closed and his arms crossed tightly over his own chest like he feared if he didn’t control them they’d betray him again, reaching out for the lost warmth Poe’s body without his permission.

“I said nothing.”

“I was asleep,” Hux said, feeling he needed to make sure this was well understood. “I’m just a . . . turbulent sleeper, and you were in my way.”

“I thought we weren’t talking about it.”

“We’re not. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t think—”

“I didn’t.”

“Okay, good. Because I was _clearly_ asleep and didn’t know it was you—”

“Who did you think it was?” Poe asked.

“Wha—nobody. That’s not what I meant.”

“Nobody? Or maybe just anyone but me . . .” Poe suggested with a smirk.

“Not _anyone_. Just preferably no one who’s ever stuck chewed gum on me. You don’t really have room to be offended here by me not wanting to _hug_ you.”

“It was really more of a cuddle.”

Hux wanted to tell him how much he hated him again but then he recalled the way Poe had said “I know” in response to this the night before and stopped. He didn’t want to hear that or anything like it again.

“It’s almost stopped raining,” Hux said. “We should get to work.”

“No point.”

“Why?”

“It was raining all night, that hole will be full of water, we won’t get anything done toda—”

“No!” Hux said, not having considered this himself but filled with horror at the thought. “No no no.”

He slid out of the bunk, continuing to chant negations as he went for the door. He didn’t pause to put on his shoes, but took off in the direction of the TIE, darting over the wet ground at a dangerous pace.

He heard Poe behind him, shouting something, but he didn’t stop.

He reached the ship and found that Poe was right, which he’d already known, but seeing it—

“Fuck! Shit! Fuck this! Motherfu—” He stepped directly into the water without rolling up his pant legs, and waded out to the edge of the hole they’d spent the previous three days digging and the two before that waiting to dig. It wasn’t all undone, but much of it was—the water had softened the silt around their hole and made it collapse, partially filling it in and reburying a good precious foot of the wing that they’d worked so hard to dig out, that part was the really dry stuff and it had taken most of the previous day to do.

He reached into the water at his feet and dug his hands into the mud. He pulled them out, cupping dripping handfuls of sand that ran sleepily through his fingers like a liquid creature wanting to escape back to its bed the bottom of the pond where he’d disturbed its rest. He bent and grabbed more and then before it could escape he flung it at the exposed wing of the plane and felt stupidly elated by the sound it made when it landed, spattering across the black of the solar panels and then running in ugly streaks down into the cracks between them. He repeated this until his arms were sore and he had mud dotted up to his shoulders and probably everywhere else as well, every handful he let go was accompanied by a new string of profanity and insults, every one he’d ever heard and a few he was making up as he went along.

He stopped, breathing hard, his muddy hands hanging at his sides feeling raw and like they were a part of another person’s body he was just borrowing.

“Wow.” Poe’s voice coming from directly behind him.

Poe was standing at the edge of the pool, leaned against a tree watching this scene with a small smile pulling at one side of his mouth. Hux had no idea when he’d arrived and supposed he didn’t especially care.

Bending forward Hux and rinsed his arms with a calm efficiency that sharply juxtaposed the manic rage which had led to his arms needing to be washed.

When he’d finished Poe came to the edge of the pool and offered a hand which Hux took because the bank was extremely slippery now and he wasn’t too excited about the idea of falling backwards into the water or falling forward onto his face. He did slip a little and would have wound up on the ground if Poe hadn’t caught him under the arms and steadied him. But Poe didn’t help him up onto the drier ground right away, he just stood there, leaving Hux perched with his toes dug precariously into the sharply slanted, muddy bank only not falling back because of Poe’s hold on him.

“What are you doing?” Hux squirmed, trying to get a better footing.

“I haven’t entirely decided on that yet . . .” Poe said, a very slight smile on his face that made Hux lean away instinctively, wondering if he was about to end up back in the water anyway.

Poe adjusted his hold so Hux wasn’t dangling anymore but still not on solid ground, just supported enough to regain his balance. His hands had slid into the center of Hux’s back, slightly overlapping, pulling against his weight.

“What are you doing?” Hux repeated, quieter this time, his throat choking each word on its way out like it wanted them back.

“Hold on, I’m almost there . . .”

“Just help me up,” Hux said, still having to force words out through a space that simply didn’t want to accommodate their size and shape.

Poe stepped back letting Hux regain his footing more but not releasing him.

“You should get mad like that more often,” Poe said.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I just liked it,” Poe said, his bottom lip disappearing between his teeth for a moment.

“Why would I care what you like?”

“You care,” Poe said, moving one of his hands down and pressing on Hux’s lower back, forcing him to step forward until their bodies just barely made contact. Enough to let Hux know it wasn’t a game and he wasn’t reading something that wasn’t there into Poe’s behavior.

“I thought I wasn’t your type,” Hux said, dropping all pretense that he didn’t understand why he was still in Poe’s arms now having been sufficiently “rescued” from the miniature lake that had swallowed all of their work.

“I changed my mind,” Poe said. “Now my type is angry redheads with really dirty mouths.”

"Well it's a one-sided attraction,” Hux said, his words not quite having the impact he’d intended as he swayed forward without meaning to, bringing his forehead in light contact with Poe’s.

"Is it?”

Hux was certain he _said_ yes, but he didn't _hear_ it. He felt his breath rebound off Poe's mouth in the half-instant before it covered his in a kiss that was not at all tentative, not up for debate. Not demanding, but _sure_ and—

He released the front of Poe's shirt where he hadn’t realized he’d been holding it in clenched fists and dug his hands into Poe’s hair instead, gripping so tight he felt it pull at the roots. Poe coaxed his mouth open too easily, like he had the same kind of control Kylo had to remove Hux's free will and bend him to Poe's whim. It wasn't necessary at all because Hux was giving in nakedly, bracing his arms on Poe's shoulders so he could climb higher on the bank and press himself to Poe fully.

After a few extremely long, delirious seconds Poe broke their kiss and tilted his head so his mouth was by Hux’s ear.

“Do you always kiss people you’re not attracted to like that?” he whispered.

Hux pushed Poe’s hands off his back and stepped way. “You’re a fucking asshole, Dameron. I hope you know that,” he said and stalked away back towards the hut alone.

* * *

It started raining on the way which gave Hux a few moments of relief because he had to focus on not getting lost or walking into a mud pit so the awkwardness of returning to the hut after what had just happened by the plane was delayed.

The walk was only a few minutes, but it rained so hard that they were both completely drenched when they finally got inside. Hux turned and sat down heavily with his back to the wall, water from his clothes dripping steadily onto the floor making a shallow puddle around him like he was sitting on a stranded black cloud.

Poe had paused by the door and was removing his boots, not paying much attention to the task, instead watching Hux as he worked, a smile just warping his mouth at the corners until Hux finally shouted, “ _What_ are you looking at? Stop it.”

“I’m looking at you, obviously. And I can do whatever I want. You’re not my boss.”

“Well, you should stop anyway, because it’s rude.”

“No, actually. It’s exactly what anyone would be doing after what happened back there . . . anyone normal, I mean,” Poe said, looking like he was trying to force down a smile.

“I am perfectly normal,” Hux said, obstinately picking out the only part of Poe’s words which he didn’t think would lead directly to a conversation about them kissing. He realized he was sitting on something and reached behind to to find one of his own boots trapped between him and the wall. He wrenched it free and was about to actually throw it when Poe caught his arm, stopping this motion. He took the boot and set it aside but held onto Hux’s arm, changing his grip to a softer one, his thumb pressed to the inside of Hux’s wrist like he was checking his pulse.

“You’re not normal,” Poe said, moving onto his knees and crawling forward into Hux’s space in a way that was lithe and predatory and made Hux slip down the wall and fall back onto his other arm like he’d been hypnotized into it—a position Poe took advantage of by placing his free hand on the wall behind Hux’s head and hovering over him. “You’re _weird_ and _interesting_. And I _really_ enjoyed kissing you just now.”

“I . . . so?” Hux said, his usual ease with words completely gone. He wasn’t used to this kind of openness, everyone he knew was guarded and his relationships with them marked by professional distance. He’d never been spoken to like this before, even by Poe who hadn’t exactly been demure about expressing his feelings so far.

“ _So_ I want to do it again. I thought I was making that pretty clear . . .” he said, swiping his thumb over Hux’s wrist, causing a bright shiver to shoot up his arm to the shoulder. “You okay with that?”

“Okay?” Hux answered, somewhere between agreeing and just repeating Poe’s word.

“Maybe if I start somewhere else first?” Poe asked, bringing the wrist he was holding to his face and pressing his lips to the place he’d been stroking with his thumb. He opened his mouth slightly, heating Hux’s skin with his breath. Hux let out a sound he couldn’t quite conceal even with his bottom lip clenched hard between his teeth. He saw Poe’s mouth twitch in a satisfied smile that made him want to drag his hand back and slap it off his face but—

Poe placed the tip of his tongue into the tiny space between the prominent tendons on Hux’s wrist and pressed firmly. Hux’s arm jerked but not because he was pulling away, he’d just never had this done to him before or considered that it might be a nice thing to have done to you. It was, devastatingly so—making his hips lift off the floor for a half second. Poe closed his mouth again, sucking a very small amount of the delicate skin on Hux’s wrist into his mouth.

“Tell me to stop if you want,” Poe said, his breath now cooling Hux’s skin due to the moisture his kiss had left there.

“Well, I’m not going to beg you for it if that’s wha—”

“You see consent as _begging?_ Yikes . . .”  Poe said, looking down at him with an expression somewhere between unease and amusement.

“That’s not what I meant. You just already got what you wanted—”

“Not yet I haven’t, but trust me I intend to fix that right now, Dirty Mouth,” Poe said, looping his hand around the back of Hux’s knee and dragging it up around his hip. Hux let his elbow slip to the side so he was flat on his back when Poe kissed him that time.

He flinched when Poe’s hands slid under his shirt to cup his waist, the sensation of the wet fabric peeling away from his skin making him aware that it had been sticking to him, illustrating just how much his body wasn’t like Poe’s. He did try to maintain a certain level of physical fitness in the work out center on the private officer’s deck of his ship, but he wasn’t big by any means. He didn’t care to put in the time it would have taken to really add muscle mass onto his thin frame and felt he appeared too small without clothes, without the angular dimensions of his uniform pieces to add a false appearance of strength to his frame.

They honestly would have needed to undress anyway even if they weren’t planning on doing anything else, but Poe removing his clothing felt scarier than it would have it he’d done it himself. He could have expected a reasonable amount of privacy had he been turned away and doing it himself, but Poe turned out to be the kind of lover who felt they needed to get their fingerprints onto every inch of you while you were together and his very thorough tactile examination of Hux’s upper body after discarding his shirt made Hux feel harassed almost like he needed to respond a certain way and would seem stiff and cold if he didn’t. Poe didn’t seem like he was being disappointed by anything about him, but since he was annoyingly positive about even the worst situations, Hux didn’t feel he could trust Poe’s neutrality as any kind of flattering endorsement of his body.

It was worse when Poe stopped, though, and sat back on his heels, making Hux feel even more like he was being exposed to judgement by giving Poe a much more complete view in being further away. Poe was smiling in that strange, sleepy way Hux had caught from him the afternoon they’d gone to the cave and he didn’t like it at all. It was the smile version of Poe’s hands all over his chest and back—too hard to interpret, too soft maybe.

He resisted covering his chest with his arms when Poe looked away for a few moments while undoing the front his own suit which had been zipped to the top for once. Hux swallowed and hoped it wasn’t seen when Poe had freed his arms, revealing a much more impressive version of what having a shirt plastered to your skin could look like. He wasn’t given more than a few seconds to note this however as Poe had stripped his own shirt off quickly, giving Hux a view of the kind of body he would never have and only ever hope to be allowed to appreciate on others.

Poe didn’t hesitate in his motions, he wasn’t putting on a show in undressing even though it really would have been hard to look like he wasn’t. He grabbed Hux’s hips and dragged him forward so he was kneeling between Hux’s tented knees. Then he tugged roughly upwards so Hux’s hips were almost in his lap forcing an arch into his spine. Poe leaned forward and placed his mouth on Hux’s stomach making him jump and turn his head away, pressing his lips together to halt a moan he felt was too strong for how little was happening.

He went slow from there, his fingers hooked into the waist of Hux’s suit and pulling carefully, exposing his lower stomach in incremental portions, his thumbs pressing along the ridges of his hipbones as they emerged above the fabric.

Cool little drops of water were running from Poe’s hair and falling onto Hux’s chest and stomach in a maddening contrast to the warm damp he was leaving behind a trailing tongue that explored him too completely, the way his hands had done before. He felt like he was being worshipped, and he wasn’t enjoying it one bit. This kind of treatment felt like something you would give to someone who you thought was fragile, in need of unusual care, which Hux was not. He was a leader, and if someone was going to worship him he preferred they do it with dignity and reserve not this particular kind of indulgent reverence.

“Are you going to spend all day at that? Can we get on with it already?” he said finally, impatience threaded into his words.

Poe lifted his head, eyebrows raised in question. “Am I boring you?” he asked, a half formed grin on his face. Hux was sure he would have felt offended if he’d been stopped in the middle of having his mouth around another person’s nipple, but Poe only seemed amused.

“No,” Hux said. “It’s just weird you doing that. Like I’m someone you . . .” —love— “ . . . know.”

Poe shifted so he was covering Hux, his face coming up under Hux’s jaw.

“You want me to be meaner? Treat you like a drunk stranger I coaxed out of a bar into my bed for one night? That’s not really my thing . . .”

“Well then you can forget it if you think this will be some kind of . . . moment.”

“Oh, stop. I’m not going to make you do something you don’t enjoy. I’m just not going to pretend you’re someone other than who you are, you know what I mean?”

“I don’t.”

“I mean I’m here with you. And I’m going to _be here_ with you and not pretend you’re someone more _appropriate_ or a complete stranger. Because we’re not strangers.”

When Hux didn’t respond to that Poe touched his face, lightly coaxing Hux to look at him. “Right?” he asked, making Hux feel he couldn’t look away, held in place by more than the tips of Poe’s fingers.

“No,” Hux said. “We’re not strangers.”

Not strangers. But not friends either. Not merely acquaintances, certainly. They were some other configuration of close which maybe didn’t even have a definition. They were just . . . familiar. That was how Poe’s hands felt on his skin even while their gentle manipulations had irritated him. It was how his mouth felt and tasted, not at all foreign or even particularly new—not boring, though, as Poe had suggested. Just familiar. And on Hux’s throat again, searching out sensitive areas with an ease that felt terrifying, that felt—

Like something he needed to end before it crushed him worse than Poe saying he’d let Hux go because he wasn’t—because Poe _didn’t know what to do with him_ other than just leave him on some random planet and walk way—

He couldn’t let Poe keep touching him this way and have any chance of surviving that plan as even a sliver of the person he’d been before. He allowed himself three seconds of surrender to it, in which he was able to appreciate and note the way Poe’s lower lip perfectly filled the dip at the center of his collarbone, before he forced himself to stop it. 

“Look, Poe, I just—”

“You just want me to fuck you right now without all of this nonsense?” Poe said, his mouth hovering over Hux’s sternum.

“I thought that was the point, yes,” Hux said, glad he sounded steady somehow, because Poe’s wording had caused a feral wave of arousal to sweep over his skin in every direction from the place where Poe’s mouth was brushing his chest.

“Then say it,” Poe said, looking directly into Hux’s face like a dare. “Ask me to fuck you.”

“Fine,” Hux said. But it still took him a few seconds to make the words come out of his mouth. “I want you to fuck me right now without all the nonsense.”

Poe’s hands caught the underside of Hux’s arms and traveled upwards, drawing them above Hux’s head and then holding them there by his wrists.

“I can be a little meaner . . .” he said, tightening his grip and earning a gasp from Hux for it.

Then he sat up, releasing Hux’s wrists and bringing his own hands back to the already lowered waist of his suit. He tugged, pulling Hux’s underwear down with the same motion. Hux allowed himself to moan that time, seeing the rougher, more wanton expression on Poe’s face as he did this, as he examined Hux’s naked hips, the tops of his thighs, his erection standing up embarrassing and obvious in the center of this. He dragged the remainder of Hux’s suit away and then pulled him up as well and forced him to turn around on his knees. Then Poe’s hands were gone for a few moments as he went about removing the rest of his own clothing. Hux watched this surreptitiously, peeking under the space between his own side and arm—trying not to compare his newly exposed lower body to Poe’s and not succeeding entirely.

Poe’s hands returned before he could become truly anxious about it. He gripped Hux’s hips, tugging backwards until Hux was seated in his lap, his legs spread on either side of Poe’s, Poe’s own cock hard against his lower back. He brought one hand up under Hux’s jaw and forced his head back until it was laying on Poe’s shoulder, their jaws aligned.

“You’re so pale,” Poe said quietly.

“You couldn’t have guessed that from looking at my face?” Hux said, angry that Poe was commenting on his body, wanting to forget himself what he looked like naked— _too_ pale in truth, slender to the tipping point of femininity.

“It’s just different seeing so much of you,” Poe said, drawing his hand down from the center of Hux’s chest to his waist, to his thigh where he tugged sharply with tensed fingers, forcing Hux to part his legs more, earning another moan from him. That was better.

“I’m pretty sure you’ve been thinking about this since the second I first touched you,” Poe said, grazing his nails up high on Hux’s inner thigh in a cruel tease of what he could have done if he’d pressed down and left scratches—a hot pink slave tattoo labeling Hux’s body as his possession.

Hux writhed, pressing himself back against Poe and dragging a small moan out him at the pressure this applied to his erection.

“Yeah, you did that then,” Poe said. “Ground your ass on me when I grabbed you.”

“Did I?” He couldn’t remember, but it was entirely possible as he’d thought it was Kylo for a few seconds.

“Yeah, you did. Almost like you were waiting for me,” Poe said, his words hitching, one hand ghosting over Hux’s mouth in an imitation of his action from that day. “I bet you almost never get fucked like you clearly need to be,” he whispered.

Hux could have attempted to deny this accusation, but he wasn’t about to mention his rough, frenzied encounters with Kylo. It wasn’t the same anyway. Kylo’s impatient, disorderly usage of him wasn’t nearly as exhilarating as the subtle, knowing things Poe was doing and saying.

“That’s true,” Hux said, fine with bending the truth a bit, wanting to encourage Poe to carry on exactly like he was, hoping that he fucked even half as well as he talked. 

But then Poe reverted to his former awful, leisurely pace again, his hand relaxing on Hux’s leg, fingers tracing warm patterns on the tender inside of Hux’s leg, moving higher but not fast enough or firm enough for Hux’s liking.

Hux started to speak again, another admonishment for being too slow, but Poe actually shushed him, bringing his thumb up to press it against Hux’s mouth to quiet him.

“No more talking for you. The only words I want to hear out of your mouth from here on are _yes_ and _please_. And my name,” Poe said, his voice low and commanding.

Hux’s shoulders straightened. This he liked. He knew how to take orders as well as give them, and this structure introduced a strong feeling of safety to the interaction. Poe was proposing a game and games had rules, games could be won by playing them better than your opponent, by cheating if you had to. This he could be sure of escaping without the bone deep emotional peril inherent to Poe’s previous unstructured attentions.

“Do you understand?” Poe asked, still instructing.

“Yes,” Hux said, his voice sounding so sharp and neat and like the way he’d responded to his teachers in school that he barely stopped himself from adding the word “sir” to the end of it.

“Good. What other words are you allowed to use?” Poe asked, bringing his hand up to the base of Hux’s cock, circling it but not applying pressure.

“Please,” Hux said, showing that he was willing to play along as long as Poe kept it formal. He pushed his hips forward so Poe’s hand was around him more firmly.

“And?”

Hux shook his head. He didn’t want to be forced to use Poe’s name in this way. He was fine with the other two things, but not that. This direct personalization of rules made it too hard to create distance by following them.

Instead he moaned, intending to craft a distraction by covering Poe’s hand with one of his and thrusting into it. Poe grabbed that hand and pulled it away, tugging it behind his back almost painfully which Hux also liked.

“What’s the last word, Hux?” he asked again, moving his hand up the length of Hux’s erection in a maddeningly light gesture.

“Poe!” He said, the name popping reluctantly from his lips, almost more of an accented exhale than a word.

At the sound of his name Poe let go of Hux’s arm and pushed him forward onto his knees.

“Good. Better,” he said warmly, leaning forward and placing his hand under Hux’s chin to pull his head back. “This is what you like?”

“Yes.”

“You’re used to other people on their knees for you, though . . . right, General?”

“Stormtroopers don’t kneel,” Hux said, his need for correct information forcing him to deviate from Poe’s rules. Poe covered his mouth.

“Do you need some incentive to not disobey me?” he asked.

Hux twitched. He gasped under Poe’s fingers. This was so much better. He liked being told what to do in bed, and he liked the threat of punishment for breaking a rule.

Poe’s free hand moved down Hux’s side settling on his hip.

“Maybe this?” Poe asked, smoothing his hand over Hux’s buttock and then lifting it slightly, the clear threat of a slap implied in it. Hux’s shoulders drooped, his elbows unhinged at the thought of being spanked for being insolent. Poe sighed and retracted his hand.

“No, because you’d like that too much, wouldn’t you?” He removed the hand covering Hux’s mouth so Hux could speak. “Wouldn’t you?” he repeated, clearly wanting a verbal answer.

“Please,” Hux said, too overcome with want to think about using the more appropriate word and instead coming out with the one which exposed his honest desires a little too much.

“It’s not much of a punishment if you want it enough to beg me for it,” Poe said, and Hux was pleased to hear there was an unsteady quality in his voice now. He was enjoying this and it made Hux dizzy to think that he was causing Poe to sound that way, _feel_ that way. He thought back to his curiosity about fucking Poe right after the crash when he’d wondered if it would feel like making the Resistance crumble if he could make Poe do so for him. It wasn’t quite like that, but he was almost shaking anyway with how good it felt to know he was the reason Poe was turned on so much.

“Maybe as a reward system then?” Poe offered, sliding his hand up Hux’s spine and raking his fingers through Hux’s hair on the crown of his head where it was long enough for him to pull it if he chose to. “Be good for me, and I’ll consider it.”

Hux nodded, pressed his forehead to the ground, the muscles in his stomach contracting, sending a pleasant jolt downward, a domino effect of tightening that swept over his lower back and legs, making his toes curl until the arches of his feet cramped painfully.

Poe placed the tip of one finger on the first vertebrae of Hux’s spine. He ran it downward catching the top of each one in succession like he was swiping his hand over a row of buttons on a control panel, activating them in turn. Hux shivered noticeably. Though it had been done lightly, there was a suggestion of violence in it like he was just highlighting this very important structural component of Hux’s body and pointing out his control over it.

“You’re hot like this . . .” Poe said, his breath heated against Hux’s back, between his shoulder blades. “Submissive and wanting me.”

Hux sagged towards the floor a little, liking the praise even while not being very comfortable with being called out for how desperate he was to be treated this way. His knees slipped apart more and Poe took advantage of this pose by pushing on his back, forcing his chest to the ground and his hips higher.

Poe’s hand passed down his spine again, trailing over his tailbone and then down to press dampened fingertips against him. Hux exhaled a harsh, wordless sound against the floor pushing his hips back on Poe’s hand. He was pleased when Poe didn’t tease him, inserted a fingertip to the first knuckle without any obnoxious delays. Hux moaned loud, feeling he should be appreciative of Poe’s technique now that he was complying with Hux’s wants.

“Yes, more,” he said, thinking that him being enthusiastic would be an acceptable bending of the rules, but Poe immediately retracted his hand and leaned forward over Hux’s back.

“If you do that again I swear I’ll delay fucking you until you’re literally crying for me to do it.”

Hux stayed silent, gave only the slightest of nods, knowing he’d ruin it if he spoke and Poe’s hand when back to its position. He didn’t start slow, now using more than one finger and pushing them in further.

Hux made a sound that could have been a word and then hurried to use one of the acceptable ones just in case, but he couldn’t think of the first two just then causing Poe’s name to come out instead, sounding distorted, near tortured. Poe’s fingers vanished and Hux almost swore. A half second later though he was rewarded for saying the name with a sharp, heavy slap, landed decisively on his ass and free of the timidity some people had when doing that for the first time. This clearly wasn’t his first time having a partner who liked being spanked. Hux was glad Poe knew what he was doing, but he didn’t want to think about Poe fucking anyone else, or Poe’s hands or mouth on them even. He wanted Poe to like being with him so much he’d be ruined for anyone else afterwards—even maybe that Poe’s memories of past experiences might pale and seem unsatisfying next to the ones they were making that morning. The idea of being the sole holder of Poe’s pleasure was so heady he didn’t immediately register when Poe used his hand to guide the tip of his cock to where he fingers had been.

“Yes,” Hux breathed, and Poe rewarded him with another smack, overlapping the first and hopefully leaving a welt Hux could appreciate later in private.

“Politer,” he instructed, pausing where he was, barely inside and waiting.

“Please.”

Poe’s hands slid up and around Hux’s waist, holding him in place as he thrust forward. Hux moaned loudly, partially because it hurt a small amount but also because he was suddenly and distressingly reminded of Kylo again by the presence of Poe’s hands there. Kylo had very large hands and he could almost span the entire circumference of Hux’s waist with them in this same position. He’d hated how small and breakable it made him feel but had never voiced this insecurity to Kylo. Poe’s hands were much smaller, though, and far more elegant in the way he used them. Hux supposed that the way Poe handled him, the extremely controlled but also relaxed way he moved them over Hux’s skin was indicative of Poe’s skill as a fighter pilot. Every action was purposeful. A lack of this type of discipline would make him ineffective and even dangerous in the air, in the middle of a battle where he’d need to rely on this control to stay alive, to win.

He liked thinking about that. The deliberateness required to become that skilled was admirable and Hux felt it reflected his own mental exactness. And it was nice to be touched this way, guided by sure hands. It made him feel important to be the recipient of Poe’s talents in this area. Poe had said he didn’t pick up strangers, making it possible this put Hux into a select group of people who needed to earn Poe’s interest the way Hux expected people to earn his. He wanted to believe this far more than he should have—that Poe wouldn’t have done this with just anyone, but that something about Hux was so alluring Poe would betray his own people for the chance to fuck him even one time.

One of Poe’s hands slid down Hux’s hip and closed around his cock again. 

“Do you want me to come _in_ you or _on_ you?” he asked. “You can answer that.”

“Why would I care where—uhn— _you_ come?”

“Don’t you?” Poe asked, speeding his motions a little.

“F-fine. In me. It’s less messy.”

“And you don’t like when things are _messy_. You like everything neat and orderly and under your control.” He was moving steadily in time with his words now, and Hux hated that the note of mocking in Poe’s voice honestly excited him at that moment. “Even while you’re getting fucked. Are you counting my thrusts? Maybe timing exactly how long I fucked you for so you can enter it into your precious databank later?”

Hux bit his lip to stop a very loud, very revealing sound coming out of his mouth. He wouldn’t ever do such a thing. Adding that kind of information into a computer others could access would be folly. But it was going into the secret Poe file that existed only in his mind. Everything about this was. It wasn’t as sterile as what Poe was teasing him with, but it was very detailed. The size and feel of Poe’s cock buried inside him, Poe’s voice when he was excited, those lovely, _intentional_ hands and the way they were currently applying their unique talents to his erection.

“But maybe you like this kind of mess, huh? My come running out of you after, reminding you of being with me?” Poe said, his voice fragmented into gasping, barely audible syllables.

Poe sat back, pulling Hux against his chest and thrusting up just on the edge of being too hard without going past it. 

“What would the men on your ship think if they knew how much their general was enjoying getting fucked by some lowly Resistance pilot who outsmarted him and stole one of ships—” Poe said, his breath heated and uneven against the angle of Hux’s shoulder.

Hux came listening to that, his cry loud, ragged and guilty, his dick spasming in Poe’s hand, shame and pleasure flooding him equally, making him feel like he’d shatter in the collision.

The hand that been on Hux’s cock moved to his throat smearing his own come there, smutty and enthralling like the thought of Poe’s come trickling obscenely down his thigh.

The sound Poe made when he finished was light and soft, sort of beautiful, and out-of-place with the restrained ferocity of his thrusts. Hux had the ridiculous thought that if he was capable of coming twice that close together that he might have finished again just hearing it. That sound belonged to him. Poe’s climax did and by extension Poe himself—every muscle that tensed as he orgasmed, every cell affected by it was Hux’s for those few seconds.

He liked that. Loved it, in fact—the thought of owning Poe Dameron. He imagined Poe as one of _his_ pilots, the only one with a name, special, in charge of a fleet that he’d trained to be as unstoppable as he was, as they both were. He imagined Poe wearing bruises from his Emperor’s teeth under the collar of his flight suit while he fought and then coming back to the ship, electric with his victories, and fucking Hux until he couldn’t move or speak.

The excitement surrounding this idea waned as the last strains of his climax did, replaced by a near nauseating concern about what that fierce, possessive desire meant, especially when Poe easily manipulated him afterwards, turning him and kissing him so delicately, so _sweetly_ it was like being slapped hard across the face which he did not like the way he liked being slapped other places. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuck yeah, Dark Pilot Poe! ;) Inspired by [this](http://brilcrist.tumblr.com/post/142740135419/poe-dameron-best-pilot-in-the-first-order-coz) piece of fanart by the amazing Brilcrist which I also intend to expand on in a filthy, filthy one shot someday (hopefully) soon.  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> I’ve always felt Hux would have a strong humiliation kink, and Poe’s probably the kind of person who gets off on whatever gets his partner off. He just wants to make them lose their shit for him.  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> During editing I kept adding to that sex scene and then taking things out again when I felt it was getting too brutal. I wanted to soften it a bit more by the end, but I really have a hard time picturing these two having vanilla sex as they’re both so intense and addicted to adrenaline in their own ways. Or I'm just a perv. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
>   
> And can we just PLEASE invent some more words for asses which don't sound ridiculous? [official request @Webster's]  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> Also: 
> 
> Hux: This ship has a hyperdrive. 
> 
> Poe: *thinking* I KNEW YOU WANTED ME, YOU EVIL STRAWBERRY LOLLYPOP!!! SO WHO GETS NAKED FIRST!? 
> 
> (There’s your insight into Poe’s mind, MsMod. Just smut and sass. :D)


	6. You Keep Me From Crashing Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suggested song for this chapter is "High" by Sivik.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~BEFORE YOU READ THIS CHAPTER~~  
> Please consult the tags on this fic and make sure you are okay with ALL of them before proceeding. I’d rather not say which are relevant to this chapter to avoid spoiling. Just please double-check or make sure you scan them if you didn’t do so before.

He didn’t let the kiss go on long. He couldn’t. He laid down on the floor on his side, his back to Poe, unable to face the aftermath of what they’d done. It didn’t _really_ change anything or _really_ matter, but it also—

“You’re right, you know,” Poe said, the first words spoken since they’d finished.

“About what?”

“I am kind of an asshole. But I think you like that about me.”

“That’s a bold assumption to be making especially since I haven’t indicated that there’s anything about you I like at all,” Hux said, feeling like he was back on that slippery bank again, attempting to regain his footing without success.

Poe laughed. “That would be slightly more convincing if you didn’t have my handprint on your ass when you said it.”

“Don’t be crude,” Hux said sharply. But he was actually pleased. Poe was bragging about having marked him. Even after the welt had faded, the once existent sting of it would remain, unknown in their shared, secret history neither side would ever know. Hux didn’t cultivate secrets as a rule. Secrets could undo you, come back to haunt you later, so he didn’t indulge in vices. He didn’t know if his relationship with Kylo was that kind of secret. He hadn’t thought of it consciously as a secret, though he’d never advertised it either.

“Is everyone on your ship afraid of you?” Poe asked, ignoring Hux’s acerbic reprimand about the evidence he’d left on Hux’s body.

Hux considered this question seriously for a few moments. He would have liked to have said yes to this, but he refused to be delusional about himself. He preferred to earn accomplishments rather than embellish on half efforts in building his legacy.

“Probably not,” he said finally.

“But no one backtalks do they?”

“None of my men, no.”

“What does that mean?”

“Kylo doesn’t exactly have the world’s greatest manners.”

“What’s the deal with him anyway?”

“If that’s a question you want an answer to you’ll have to rephrase it into something less vague.”

“You get weird every time he’s mentioned,” Poe said, and Hux could tell by the direction of his voice that he was sitting up, probably hovering so he could see Hux’s face.

“I do not.”

“Yeah, actually, you do.”

“What’s your point?”

“I’m just curious why he gets to you so much.”

“He doesn’t.”

“You’re fucking him,” Poe said. Not a question, a statement that had the hint of a laugh around it, turning Hux’s back cold and making him twitch his shoulders.

“Does he leave the mask on during?” Poe asked, his voice slipping deeper, sounding morbidly curious, making Hux wonder if Poe was picturing them together.

“No.”

Once.

“What does he look like under that thing?”

Hux had to think about this before answering. He was trying to find some way to describe Kylo’s attractiveness—and he wanted to be sure he _did_ describe him as attractive, not wanting Poe to think it was just convenience or that Hux couldn’t find anyone attractive willing to sleep with him—but this was more difficult than it maybe should have been. Kylo was strange, none of the traditional words used to describe attractiveness seemed to apply to him. He wasn’t handsome exactly and beautiful sounded too sentimental.

“He’s . . . sexy,” Hux said, regretting the word choice as soon as it had hissed past his teeth.

_“Sexy?”_ Poe echoed, and even though Hux couldn’t see his face, he could guess at Poe’s expression from his tone: amusement mixed with a bit of doubt that frustrated him. Partly because of his concern that Poe would think Hux couldn’t get anyone attractive and partly because it made it sound like Poe doubted anyone associated with the Order could be called that—which implied that he also did not find Hux attractive either. He was busy being offended about this when Poe spoke again, asking a question he hadn’t expected at all, interpreting Hux’s silence as some other kind of offense.

“Sorry,” Poe said. “Are you in love with him?”

“Why? Are you jealous?” Hux responded, hoping to embarrass him as he found things like jealousy embarrassing in himself.

“Should I be?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Hux said, his mind reeling out a massive, frightening list of possible reasons Poe might have for asking that. It made him dizzy, made him hope Poe might expand on it in some way to cut down that list to a more manageable size. 

But he didn’t. He just said, “Hmmm. Is he in love with you?”

“Does this line of questioning have a point or are you simply incapable of silence?” Hux said harshly, frustrated by his inability to properly categorize or interpret Poe’s queries, because one item was popping up alarmingly highlighted in red off that list: he wanted Poe to say out loud that he _was_ jealous. Maybe because of his own recent desire to own Poe, which would feel less scary if Poe was thinking anything similar—he could use that desire for control as long as Poe never knew about his own mad desire for the opposite.

“Do you think he’ll come looking for you?” Poe asked, unfazed by Hux’s attempt to derail the conversation.

Hux had not considered this, but he doubted it. He didn’t know if this bothered him or not. His emotions were a mess of static, blocking his ability to think clearly.

“No. Probably not,” he said, his voice coming out strange and muted, like he’d spoken into his own hand to hide it.

“Sorry,” Poe said.

“Why would you be sorry about that? I wouldn’t think you’d be looking forward to him showing up here. I understand you didn’t get along too well the last time you saw each other . . .”

“I meant I felt sorry for you.”

“I don’t need your pity, Dameron.”

“The word you’re looking for is _empathy_ ,” Poe said patiently. “I assume it wouldn’t feel too good to know the person you’re sleeping with wouldn’t come looking for you after you disappeared.”

Hux closed his eyes, pressed his lips together, wondered if Poe would come looking for him if he’d been in Kylo’s position. He felt sure the answer would have been yes. That was what his kind of people did.

“Kylo has other business,” he said shortly.

“Do you want him to look for you?”

“No.”

“What? You don’t want to be rescued?”

“Not by Kylo,” Hux said, deciding it as he said it, suddenly flooded with a cold, bitter resentment against his previous lover which he didn’t think was brand new, but deeply buried.

“Ouch,” Poe said, laughing in a way which had no real humor in it. “Give him my apologies as well then next time you see each other.”

“What?”

“Well you hate him enough to reject a rescue, but you’re sleeping with him . . . does he know you hate him?”

“I don’t hate him. I just . . .” but he didn’t know what else he could say about Kylo. He felt other words attempting to rise to his mouth and had to clench his jaw and swallow hard like he could force them back down. They didn’t go entirely, their shapes sat on his tongue like he had a mouthful of gravel. He’d almost asked if Poe loved everyone _he_ fucked.

Poe was silent, waiting for an elaboration that wouldn’t ever come. Hux wasn’t thinking about Kylo at all anymore, he was imagining what it might be like if Poe had answered yes to his unasked question. He wasn’t prone to fantasy of any kind. Even his belief about becoming emperor wasn’t something he pictured in a clear way. He was thinking now about the way Poe had looked at him just before they’d kissed by the pond, about the way Poe had kissed him after they’d finished and what it might be like to be kissed like that every day. A vibrant, chilly fear encased his chest and rushed down to the tips of his fingers making them ache like they were frostbitten. He shivered, and Poe asked if he was cold, already covering him with the blanket without waiting for a response. His hand settled warmly on Hux’s side making him go rigid. Poe removed his hand.

“Are you regretting what happened?” Poe asked, a strange note in his voice that Hux interpreted as insecurity.

“No.”

“But you don’t want me touching you . . .”

Hux shook his head, but it wasn’t an answer to Poe’s question, he was trying to shake away the static so he could think. 

“I don’t know what I want,” he blurted. A confession which was true about everything in his life at that moment.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Poe said. “How could you?”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. Nevermind.”

“I don’t understand you. I don’t know why you kissed me,” Hux said, again wildly blurting things he knew he shouldn’t be saying.

“Because I wanted to. I’ve been wanting to for . . . awhile, actually,” Poe said, something like caution in the way he phrased it.

“Since when?” Hux asked, his heart beating oddly, grateful it wasn’t only him being unnerved by the direction this conversation was headed.

“Since about the same time you tried to claw my face off when you found out about the gum thing,” Poe admitted readily, making Hux question if Poe was actually uncomfortable with their discussion. “You’re a shit fighter,” Poe added, “But I like ‘em kinda feisty.”

“You make me sound like a cat.”

“You act like one.”

“In what way?”

“You’re aloof. A bit sulky. And you act like you don’t want attention until you’re not getting it and then you’re just relentless about getting as much as possible until I want to chuck you outside and leave you there overnight.”

“You’re no treat to spend time with yourself, you know.”

“I do know. And you’re welcome from this point forward to shut me up anytime you like by putting your tongue in my mouth.”

“That’s gross,” Hux said, truly disliking both the suggestion, and the words used to propose it.

“Say what you like,” Poe said easily. “But since you’ve bragged all about your ‘perfect recall’ I now know you’ll be forced to think about kissing me every time I annoy you.”

“Do the people you know find this type of obnoxiousness charming?” Hux asked, wanting to make sure Poe knew that he did not. 

“I’m not this obnoxious with them. I only do it to annoy _you_. You’re incredibly easy to bait for someone in your position . . .”

Hux scoffed, but had no other comeback. He couldn’t very well let Poe know that nobody had ever managed to get under his skin like Poe could.

“So,” Poe said, and then paused until Hux was finally forced to say, “So _what?_ ”

“So,” Poe said again. “It’s yourself that you hate?”

“I don’t hate myself. Where did you get that fro—”

“ _Because_ you don’t seem like you’d make a habit of fishing for compliments, but I can’t think of any other reason you’d pretend to be confused about why I’d want to kiss you.”

“I’m not pretending. Your actions are legitimately _confusing_. You . . .” He had to take a breath before going on. “You called me _a terrorist_ when we first met. You clearly pride yourself on your own sense of righteousness, and yet you’ve done . . . this, with me, your declared enemy.”

Poe made a humming sound before answering. “I thought you read my file,” he said.

“I did. What does that have to do with this?”

“You yelled at me for the crash and called me the ‘best pilot in the galaxy’—”

“I was quoting reports.”

“Yeah, I caught on that you weren’t trying to flatter me, don’t worry,” Poe said, a laugh just hanging from the end of his words. “I just meant that you obviously had information about my reputation, probably about my service record as well.”

“I did.”

“That didn’t tell you anything that might be relevant here?”

“No, and this is getting tiresome. Can you please make your point more quickly—”

“Fighter pilots tend to be attracted to danger as a rule . . .” Poe said, his voice coming from above and close by.

“I’m not particularly dangerous on my own . . .” Hux said, wanting to lead Poe into saying more, magnetically drawn to the possibility of Poe outwardly admitting to helplessness in regard to being attracted to him.

“Yes, you are,” Poe corrected, making Hux have to fight hard to keep his face neutral since he could feel Poe studying it. “You’re not dangerous like you’re thinking. But you’re plenty dangerous.”

He brought his hand up under Hux’s chin as he spoke, running his thumb along his bottom lip. The urge to open his mouth, maybe present his tongue as another place for Poe to apply the ridges of his fingerprint was almost too much. Poe touching his mouth that way had been more affecting than being kissed had been—kissing served the physical drives of both people involved, but there was something . . . _appreciative_ about what Poe had done, something more than simple lust. 

Hux turned his head finally, starting to feel uncomfortable with being seen and not seeing in return. The look on Poe’s face was similar to the way he’d looked by the lake but lacking in the cavalier mirth it had contained then, his eyes focused on Hux completely, his lips parted. He leaned in when Hux turned, but the kiss Hux expected didn’t come. Instead Poe pressed his lips lightly to Hux’s forehead, leaving them there for a few long seconds before he stopped hovering, settling back down on the floor behind Hux. They weren’t touching anymore but Hux could feel the warmth of Poe’s chest softly contacting the length of his spine.

He wanted more. More touching, more kissing—more fucking probably at some point, but he couldn’t ask for it verbally. He angled one shoulder back until it barely brushed Poe’s skin, hoping that would be enough, relieved enough to almost sigh when it was—Poe’s arm came around his waist immediately, pulling Hux back against him.

It hadn’t stopped raining, the sounds and smells of it insistent in the air around them like the little hut had been dropped whole into the middle of the ocean with them inside of it. It was closer to a full blown storm than the heavy, windless cascades they’d seen so far, making everything darker than it should have been at that hour, the usual dimness of the day muted into near twilight. It was almost the same type of light he worked under while alone in his quarters on the Finalizer. There was no daytime in space really which meant that, though it was always technically dark outside, there was no night either. Time wasn’t measured by any one sun rising or setting, only by duties, by shift changes, travel times between solar systems, meals, sleeping, cycles of arousal. So much light suddenly, even the minimal green, wet kind that was here, had been assisting Hux in the belief that he was currently living in an alternate universe which had little to do with his other life. He had believed that anything which happened, short of his own death, would have little effect on his real life when he returned, but the longer his stay on this nameless planet went on, even before what had happened that day, the less that seemed a sure thing. He’d been changed by it in ways he didn’t think he’d know completely until he got back to the ship—a few were identifiable like knowing he wouldn’t ever be with Kylo again and a feeling that he’d always be hearing an echo of Poe saying _general_ the way he said it whenever anyone else did from then on.

Poe.

Poe had done the most damage.

The terror Hux had felt in that cave made that apparent. He wished he could believe looking back that he hadn’t thought that vision of Kylo was real. He wanted to think he’d known it was an illusion and that his concern over Poe’s fate was simply a matter of knowing he needed Poe’s help. It would be so much easier and less awful if he could make himself think that was the truth, but—

“I thought you were dead,” Hux said, inhaling so deeply afterwards that it lifted Poe’s elbow off the ground where it had been resting because Hux was so much smaller, he was enveloped almost entirely in Poe’s embrace.

“Um, just now . . .?” Poe asked hesitantly.

“No, idiot. In the cave. I did see something.”

“You didn’t exactly segue there, sorry. What did you see?”

“Kylo. He was there at the back of the cave, and he looked so _real_. I couldn’t find you so I thought _he_ had and you were . . . gone. That he’d killed you.”

“Oh. Um, and were you upset about that?”

“I . . . don’t know. I _wanted_ you gone. But then when I thought you _were_ gone I . . . it didn’t feel good,” he said unable to adequately describe the sick fear he’d experienced in those few moments before Poe had reappeared next to him.

“Hmmm. Well, I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything,” Poe said after a few seconds, maybe thinking he was giving Hux a way out of any deeper meaning behind what he’d said.

But Hux felt cold suddenly. Like he’d offered something, maybe a first attempt at cooking a new kind of food, and Poe had slapped it out his hands without even tasting it. He sat up quickly, needing to get out of reach and maybe even sight of him.

“Of course it didn’t. I don’t even like you,” he said harshly, trying to find his clothes among the tangle at their feet so he could redress—not even thinking about how pointless that was as all of their clothing was still wet. Poe grabbed his wrist.

“If it was you, if I’d thought you were dead. I would have been crushed,” he said softly.

“That’s the kind of person you are though—” Hux started, trying to dismiss Poe’s words before they went somewhere he wasn’t ready to go himself after Poe’s reaction to his admission of that small bit caring.

“No,” Poe said. “Not always. I’m not saying I wouldn’t feel a little bit bad to find that someone I’d spent any amount of time with had died, but it’s more than that. I would be specifically sad if something happened to you in particular. I know you don’t need me to tell you you’re special because you already think you are, but now I think you are to—”

Hux turned around and threw himself back at Poe, kissing him not very elegantly, but very deliberately. He wanted to on some level but more than that he was just desperate to make Poe stop talking, to stop saying all of those nice things. Hux did think he was special, but no one had ever said it directly to him and beside that he was sure that whatever Poe was talking about was not the same kind of thing. Poe was calling him special in a way which had nothing to do with his military office, nothing to do with his school awards, with his command of one of the most impressive ships in the galaxy.

Poe found him personally special.

It was different.

And it hurt unimaginably.

* * *

“Gimme your hand,” Poe said, paused on the path above him and reaching back.

“Why?”

“Because it’s slippery right there, the ground is still wet.”

“ _You_ managed it,” Hux said.

“I’m starting to get insulted here that you don’t want to hold hands with me . . .” Poe said, not smiling, but there was a hint of amusement in his voice.

Hux sighed and let Poe take his fingers and guide him up the embankment and was internally grateful for the assistance because going uphill presented the same kinds of problems you had on the flat ground of the swamp, just increased exponentially. Poe kept his hand, held in a rather official, perfunctory way until the hill leveled off and then he let go a little bit, but only to readjust his grip, slipping his fingers between Hux’s and squeezing lightly.

“I can make it from here on my own,” Hux said, still uncomfortable appearing like he was too eager for any of it.

“Yeah, but now I _am_ just holding hands with you,” Poe said, pulling their linked fingers behind his own back so Hux was forced closer. “Was Kylo not much of a hand holder?”

“He’s not the only person I’ve been with,” Hux said tartly, hoping that Kylo would not become a regular topic of teasing now that Poe knew about them. 

“I don’t doubt that,” Poe said, his eyes sweeping Hux’s face admiringly.

Hux couldn’t quite look directly into that upturned, inviting face. His eyes bounced restlessly around its features, preventing him from seeing it fully at once. It was strange being with someone so much shorter than himself in this way. He’d been on lower ground at the lake during their only standing kiss, and he was newly aware of just how much he’d have to stoop to kiss Poe as they were. It would have to be an intentional act on Hux’s part for them to kiss this way. The only time he’d taken the lead so far on a kiss was when he’d been trying to make Poe shut up before which wasn’t the same thing as this kind of kiss would be. Having the power, just based on simple biology to control this aspect of their interactions was not comforting—every time Poe kissed him, he could just accept it and there was some dignity in letting yourself be kissed. The effort of kissing someone was different, you had to accept the possibility of rejection when you chose to do it.

Poe was still watching him, he’d slid his free arm around Hux’s lower back, and didn’t seem at all concerned by the height discrepancy or embarrassed by being on the lower end of it. Hux was fairly sure he would have no problems with standing on his toes if he needed and probably wouldn’t look foolish doing so either.

He bent slightly, hoping Poe would not take this opportunity to mock him, and was encouraged, but also anxious when, for once, he didn’t. He’d have to go through with it now or risk showing how much it scared him. And Poe just waiting, looking expectant. He could have pulled Hux down and directed the situation if he’d wanted to, but he didn’t, he let Hux lean in at his own pace to close their distance. It was far more intimidating than anything they’d done previously and there was a pathetically obvious tremor in his lower lip when it finally made contact. Poe didn’t become more demanding or tug at him even then, he just let Hux kiss him however he wanted which was borderline terrifying.

He wondered how many people Poe had kissed in his life and and more importantly how many people he had allowed to kiss him _this_ way. He didn’t see how Poe couldn’t be comparing his kiss to those others and that was the worst part, it made him stop before he truly wanted to. He was reluctant to open his eyes and see some flash judgement or assessment there Poe couldn’t hide from him.

When he did look he found an expression he hadn’t anticipated. Poe looked a little dazed, his eyes still shut. He exhaled through pursed lips and then shook his head and made a small humming sound.

“What?” Hux asked, the word coming out sharper than he wanted it to, so unsettled by the way Poe was acting that he couldn’t conceal his discomfort.

“I’ve just . . . never had anyone kiss me like that before.”

Poe _had_ been comparing him to the others and now—

“What? Like what?” Hux said, his fingers flexing against Poe’s like he was trying to pull away though he wasn’t. He didn’t like admitting that he still didn’t understand, he was just feeling upset generally and wishing he hadn’t done it.

“I don’t know exactly. Kind of like, I’ve never actually been kissed before at all . . . like if that was it then everything else couldn’t even be called the same thing,” Poe said with far more honesty than Hux felt he’d ever been or ever would be able to do with anyone himself.

Then Poe smiled after observing Hux’s tense stance and cautious expression. “That’s a good thing,” he clarified. “I hope you’ll do it again at some point.”

Hux nodded vaguely, and stepped away a bit to indicate it wouldn’t be right then. What Poe had said was far worse than being compared and found lacking against Poe’s other lovers. He hadn’t known what it was he did that Poe had liked so much and was almost entirely sure he wouldn’t ever be able to replicate it on command.

“Come on,” Poe said, bringing their hands out from behind his back to hang between them. He started ahead again, leading Hux upwards again like before.

“Where are we _going_ anyway?”

“Just exploring,” Poe said.

“My favorite,” Hux said flatly and was rewarded with Poe’s laughter, a laugh which might have felt cruel before, but now sounded affectionate. Hux was glad Poe was ahead and not looking back just then because it made him smile in a way he absolutely knew looked brainless.

He didn’t complain anymore, didn’t ask any more questions, was in those few minutes as present in his body as he’d ever recalled being. He wasn’t thinking of escape, or of how anything which had happened might effect his other life. For the ten or so minutes it took to reach the top of that hill and finally break out of the oppressive cover of the trees into a sort of clearing where the sky was visible, that was Hux’s only life, and Poe was his only reason for existing.

Poe gave a celebratory hoot like he’d done that first morning after getting the fire lit, but this time Hux didn’t judge him for it. It was nice to see the sky, even if it wasn’t the black expanse of stars he was used to on his ship. The sky wasn’t quite blue. Like the planet they were on, it had an aggressively green tint that might have looked sickly if it weren’t just the exact right shade. It was pretty. A tiny golden sun was hanging just above the tops of the trees across from them looking somehow tired despite being too bright to stare at.

Poe slid his arm around Hux’s waist again and spun them both in a circle, swaying a little when they’d completed a full turn like—

"It would be very dangerous for you if you were attempting to make me dance with you right now, Dameron."

"Hmmm. Well, I wasn't until you said that . . ." Poe responded, his hand pressing into Hux's back as he stepped back to turn them around a second time.

"You're not even doing it right," Hux scolded, feeling ridiculous but also good, wanted like he never was before Poe came along and showed him what wanting was.

Poe grinned at him. "Does that mean you're an expert on dancing too? From your 'databank' or from experience?"

"Our primary educations are well-rounded," Hux answered loftily. "Clearly more than yours. You're not supposed to clumsily grope your partner for one thing."

Poe’s hand had slipped down so his fingertips were lodged under the waistband of Hux’s unzipped flight suit. He removed the hand at Hux’s reproof and placed it on his lower back again in a formal way. "Show me then, Know-It-All," he said.

"Absolutely not. I'd rather be dead."

"Come on. There's no one here but us. This is hardly more embarrassing than some other things I could remind you about . . ." Poe said, the tip of his tongue appearing and swiping at the corner of his mouth for a bare second, looking startlingly illicit.

"You're abysmal at negotiating," Hux said around a swallow he was forced to take, like the air between them had thickened into a near solid and needed to be choked down before it would become thin enough to breathe. 

Poe smiled in a way that used to make Hux want to shove his face into a mud puddle but now—no, thinking about that was worse than fucking dancing.

"It's not intended to be done with same-gender pairs," he said, stalling, but his still intact need to appear knowledgeable in all things making him actually consider doing it.

"Are you calling me an ugly girl?" Poe asked, a look of pretend offense on his face.

Hux sighed, hoping it sounded irritated in a way he hated that he didn't truly feel. It was hard, even for him, to remain forever irritated while being _relentlessly_ charmed by someone who was so very good at it.

"Your hand should be here," he said, pulling on Poe's wrist and repositioning it more appropriately on his shoulder. He held out his other hand palm up at shoulder level and Poe placed his on top, grinning distractingly.

"And no _smiling_.” 

Poe made a face of forced seriousness leveling his chin like a soldier, his recently suppressed grin still warping the corners of his mouth. Even though the situation was ridiculous, Hux enjoyed the attempt at obedience. It pleased him to have Poe follow his orders willingly. It was half petty revenge and half something more personal connected to his growing attachment. He placed his free hand on Poe's side, settling his fingers high, the index exactly fitting into the space just above Poe's lowest rib.

"Just do exactly what I do, only opposite," he instructed.

Poe actually wasn't terrible it turned out, but Hux reserved giving any compliments as he'd already made the concession to engage in this idiocy in the first place and that was more than enough allowance for one day. Also the way Poe moved his hips—which was far too much and extremely inappropriate for any kind of formal dancing—was making it difficult to concentrate on anything but how well he used a similar movement for other less clothed activities—

“Do something for me,” Poe said after a minute of silent cooperation, breaking with his rigid head position to look up at Hux’s face.

“I am already doing something for you.”

“Something else.”

“What?” Hux asked, slowing his movements, already feeling that he wouldn’t like whatever was coming next.

“Pretend we’re not us for a second.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, coming to a complete stop.

“Like, say we met somewhere else, on some planet, just two regular people and no wars or sides to take.”

Hux just blinked, waiting.

“What do you think you’d be doing if you weren’t in the First Order?” Poe prompted.

“I can’t even begin to guess.”

“Well, you don’t want _me_ choosing,” Poe said, with a smile that looked like he did want to choose and had something mean in mind.

“I’d probably have a business of some kind, I guess . . .” Hux said haltingly. “Something with engineering.”

“But a factory owner or inventor, not a grunt,” Poe added.

“Obviously.”

Poe chuckled, and brought their extended hands in between them, settling them against his own chest. “Yes, _obviously_. And I think I’d be a farmer . . . or a mechanic.”

“Makes sense.”

“Okay, how do we meet?” Poe asked, diving headlong into this fantasy with an easy, enchanting glee which Hux felt momentarily envious of because nothing ever felt as simple for him.

“I don’t know,” he said, never good at make believe even as a child.

“I could be an employee?” Poe suggested.

“I would _never_ hire you.”

“Why not? I’m a great worker.”

“Maybe. But you look like you’d steal.”

“I won’t steal from you, I promise,” Poe said, pressing their linked hands over his heart like he was making an oath.

“Fine. You have a job. Likely a dirty, exhausting, _boring_ one as I’d never put you anywhere a customer would see you.”

“Of course not,” Poe agreed like this prejudice was entirely reasonable. “Then what?”

“Why ask me? This is your game.”

“Okay. Then let’s say you _don’t_ hire me. I mean, you’re not the one who does it. One of your people hires me, and we just meet after at some point.”

“If you’re going somewhere you’re imagining will be romantic, then I’d better not know you work for me when that happens.”

“Okay, but you have to find that out about it later,” Poe insisted.

“That’s fine.”

“We meet outside of work then,” Poe said, like he was adding a solid paint stroke to a picture they were working on in tandem.

“Except I don’t know of anyplace we’d both be where that could happen,” Hux said, feeling frustrated with his lack of real input into this imaginary life Poe was building for them.

“Yeah . . .” Poe agreed. “Because you’d never set foot in anyplace I would go after work, right?”

“Definitely not,” Hux confirmed.

“Public transportation then.”

“I would never—” Hux started.

“If you _don’t_ , we’ll never meet and get to the good part,” Poe said firmly, like he was physically stopping Hux from tearing up their picture before it was completed.

“Which is . . .?” Hux asked tightly, trying not to sabotage it at least even if he couldn’t seem to help form it in any useful way. Poe was enjoying it so much and he wanted to memorize that free, careless look on his face. No one ever looked like that on his ship, and he felt like having the expression recorded as a part of his file would be like having a warm little stone he could carry in his pocket, wrap his fingers around in secret when he needed it.

“Kind of like this, I’d think . . .” Poe said, brushing his thumb over the back of Hux’s hand. 

“Fine,” Hux agreed, feeling slightly breathless. He thought for a few seconds and then added, “Let’s say I leave something on a transport—”

“—and I have to chase you down to give it back?” Poe broke in looking excited.

“If you like.”

“I do. Chasing is _fun_. Especially when your target is all _stodgy_ and _inaccessible_.”

“I thought we weren’t being us,” Hux said dryly.

“Was that a joke? I’m impressed.”

“Not very much apparently. You didn’t laugh.”

“I’m laughing inside,” Poe assured. “What did I return to you?”

“Hmmm. A book.”

“Which book?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Because if it’s a good book I might decide to keep it instead . . .”

“I knew you were a thief.”

“Only of hearts,” Poe said, turning his face up to the sky and sighing melodramatically.

“I changed my mind. You’re fired.”

“Fine with me,” Poe said, shrugging. “I’ve got a new book to read so I was going to show up late the next day anyway.”

“I never should have hired you . . .” Hux said quietly, his words sounding infused with other meaning more related to their present time and not the impossible other one they’d been imagining together.

“You didn’t hire me, remember?” Poe said. “You didn’t do any of it. It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

“That’s a useless thing to say at this point,” Hux said, but not angrily. “Apologies are a waste of time.”

“Would you rather hear that I’m not sorry? Because that’s more true. I did an unfair thing to you, but I don’t regret it like I probably should. I can’t right now,” he said, his face tipped up like when he waiting to be kissed before, but he looked less like he was waiting for Hux this time and more like he wanted to remove Hux’s clothing with his teeth. Hux would have let him, even there outside where he never would have considered doing anything like that before. The power Poe had to make him do things he’d never have agreed to once was both intoxicating and worrying. He allowed his hand to slip around Poe’s back and felt a little surge of lust when his fingertips encountered the soft trench of his spine.

Neither of them were looking at the sky they’d been so happy to see only a few minutes before, and Hux saw the light indirectly at first, reflected disturbingly in the corner of Poe’s eye, like it was filling with blood from his tear duct. A rushing, gravely sound followed it and grew rapidly in volume, shattering the moment thoroughly. Hux was pretty sure, even before turning to witness for himself the five distinct red streaks speeding across the darkening sky that the source was from Starkiller.

They’d fired the weapon. The evidence was hanging, menacing and undeniable, in the air like the claw marks of a giant animal that had swiped at the green flesh of the sky leaving those open, widening wounds behind.

Poe was still holding onto him, but his fingers had closed a bit painfully on Hux’s hair. Hux was sure that it was surprise and Poe couldn’t possibly guess that Hux was in any way connected to what was going on. He was _there_ after all, dancing with Poe, not on some unimaginable, weaponized planet that Poe didn’t even know existed but which had finally begun to fulfill its grisly purpose. Without its leader, without—

"What . . . what _is it?_ " Poe asked in a voice that just sounded like he just needed to say _something_ , not like he expected an answer from Hux, not knowing Hux had one—that of anyone in the galaxy who he could have been standing there with, Hux was the only one who could truly and fully answer his question.

"The end of the Republic," Hux said, using a line from the speech he'd been writing for that moment—only it was supposed to be given in grandeur, standing at head of his army, and, most importantly, _before_ the weapon was fired under his orders.

It was the end of Hux as well happening this way instead of that. It was the effective termination of his position. Firing the weapon he'd worked his entire career developing without him showed a lack of respect for his authority which would have been inconceivable to him a week before. They hadn't even looked for him. They hadn't tracked the TIE. For all they knew, he'd been imprisoned on the system they'd just blown up.

Returning now would be a return of shame. It would be returning to dust, to the end of his fame as the someday greatest leader in galactic history, the end of his road to emperor.

There were tears running over his cheeks, somehow cold despite the warmth of the air, despite their recent exit from his body—like he was a machine which had sprung a leak, bleeding coolant as it died. He didn’t know why exactly he was crying. He wasn’t sobbing, there were only those strangely chilly tears, breaking neatly down his face with every blink. 

Poe was shaking his shoulders gently and saying his name over and over. Hux turned back to him robotically, not wanting to even look at Poe’s face just then. What was supposed to be a moment of ultimate glory for him was actually just being forced to watch his own life explode along with those planets.

“Hux! You’re scaring me a little bit. Come on.”

“Don’t be scared,” he said in a voice of flat calm even he didn’t like. “It takes a long time to recharge—”

“ _Recharge?_ What—”

“It’s a weapon.”

“Yours? I mean, the First Order’s?”

Hux’s throat, chest, muscles, everything inside him clenched then turned hot and painful at hearing the way Poe had just tried to remove him from what had happened.

“Yes. Ours.” He wouldn’t pretend a lack of responsibility even possibly many star systems away from where the base had been fired.

“And they’re using it on . . . the Republic’s ships?” Poe asked, frowning at the fading destruction as the explosions calmed into dust, and Hux thought he heard a note of guilt in Poe’s voice, maybe because he wasn’t there to help, maybe because he _wanted_ it to be the Republic and not his friends in the Resistance who’d just died in front of him. 

“Not ships, no. Planets,” Hux said tonelessly, letting the reality of it hang ugly and irreversible in the air, mirroring the evidence of it in the sky.

“Planets . . . whole . . . just gone?”

Hux nodded. It was obvious that more than one, possibly all five, of those beams had made contact with something big enough to leave a pock mark in the sky at their termination points.

“Like the Death Star,” Poe said, his mind as quick as Hux wished it wasn’t at that moment. If he could have delayed forever Poe’s knowledge of Starkiller, he would have.

“Yes. But much more powerful,” he said, hoping there was no pride in his voice, no hint that he’d enjoyed what they’d seen. He hadn’t and not just because of the erasure of his own life, but because he didn’t see things as grayly as he had before. Poe had turned the shades of his world unbearably black and white. He felt like the two of them were singular, concise representations of both of their respective sides right then. Poe was the embodiment of the Resistance’s idealistic, chaotic, bleeding-hearted causes and Hux was everything the First Order stood for—supremacy and regulation and control. And both now seemed utterly pointless.

Poe’s hands had dropped away from him, and it felt to Hux like being pushed out into space though Poe hadn’t shoved him or attempted to do anything violent. Hux simply felt untethered and like he was suffocating.

“All of those people . . .” Poe said and then, harsher, “Which planets?”

“How should I know? I’ve been here wi—”

“So you didn’t have a plan? You were just going to haphazardly start destroying anything in your path? I don’t believe that!”

“No. But I don’t know what’s been going on since you brought me here, do I?”

“But which ones were . . . planned?” Poe asked, again sounding guilty, but it made Hux feel slightly better because he could now at least give him the small consolation that, maybe, no one he cared about had been killed that day.

“My best guess would be the Hosnian system. That’s where the New Republic’s government is, or likely was, based, so . . . probably there,” Hux said. “That would have been my decision,” he added much more quietly.

Poe backed up a step and then just sank down onto the ground which was relatively much drier up there and covered in a prickly-looking grass.

“Your decision . . .” he echoed in a whisper.

“Yes. As general.” Then he felt ashamed for making it sound like he would have simply been obligated to do it by his rank and not that he’d been there at nearly every stage of the weapon’s conception and construction. He may not have been there to speak the words in person, but his hand had invisibly overlapped the ones which had pushed the buttons that prepped and then fired the searing heat of a star into space with a force never seen before in the history of the galaxy.

“Is this the ‘order’ you so passionately defended then? Is this what _success_ looks like for you?” Poe asked in a mean, disgusted voice which felt to Hux like they’d somehow recharged the base much faster than should have been possible and fired all five beams straight into his chest.

“It’s part of war . . .” Hux defended poorly.

“War? That’s not war! A war is something you fight. There’s no fighting that. It’s just . . . _annihilation!_ ”

“It’s not _fair_ , you mean,” Hux said. “But it’s what winning looks like, Poe. And your side’s unwillingness to do something like that is why they’ll lose.”

“Better to lose then maybe . . .” Poe said, his eyes on his feet, his voice low, like he was talking to himself.

“That’s selfish of you,” Hux said, surprising himself by how much he meant it.

Poe physically jerked away from this accusation like the words were projectiles, hurtled into his face at high velocity, but recovered fast and stood again, looking riled. “ _Selfish?_ That’s a pretty fucking ironic thing for someone who just blew up a handful of planets to say!”

“ _I_ didn’t blow up anything! I was _here with you_. Or are we taking credit for everything which has happened on both of our sides since we’ve been stranded here?” Hux said, suddenly desperate for the comfort of even a partial lie.

“I would support anything my people have done, yes. I can trust they’ll carry on doing what’s right no matt—”

"Oh, such _bullshit!_ ” Hux spit out, hearing a little bit of cruelty in his own voice then, and clinging to it, needing it. He was over Poe’s inability to see past the Resistance’s brainwashing and keep acting like he was walking around with clean hands. “Stop pretending we're so different. You would have gladly blown up my ship if you could, killing me and everyone on it and then taken a medal for it! Thousands of people dead in a few seconds and you cheering from your cockpit. You already brag about the number of my ships you've personally shot down like it's some precious hobby. Do you think they're flown by robots? If we're talking about personal kill counts I would say _yours is a lot higher than mine_. I command soldiers, you _pull triggers_. And if you'd been on my side you'd have killed for me, and I would have rewarded you like they do. You're only your own side's hero, Poe, not the whole galaxy's."

Poe squinted at him, not as openly upset about these observations as Hux had intended him to be, as he’d _wanted_ him to be. He’d been trying to hurt him, make him leave, make this conversation end.

“If we’re not so different then that means things about you as well,” Poe said slowly. “It’s probably true that circumstances—or maybe fate—landed me on my side of all of this, and I’m glad for that. But if you think that about me, then you have to see that it’s the same for you. On my side, your smarts and talent for leadership would be used for _our_ causes instead of . . . that.”

Hux was shaking his head. He didn’t know if he didn’t really agree or just didn’t want to acquiesce so easily. The truth about a hypothetical didn’t really matter one way or the other and it would only make things worse if what Poe was really trying to do was _turn Hux_ to his side.

“Look,” Hux said trying to sound, not sweet exactly, but as close as he thought he could to gentle, his urge to injure Poe deflated in the tragic face of Poe’s hopeful sincerity. “I’m . . . sorry if you were confused by what’s happened between us, but . . . I’m not that person, and I never will be.”

“I disagree,” Poe said stubbornly, crossing his arms like this was all the argument he needed.

Hux scoffed loudly. Of course he did.

“You don’t _get to_ disagree about that,” Hux said, his temper wavering again. “That’s nonsensical. I’m _telling_ you—”

“If by ‘telling’ you mean ‘lying’ then sure, I guess I can’t ‘disagree’ with that,” Poe said, looking entirely unfazed by Hux’s denials. 

“I’m not _lying_.”

“But you’re not _right_ either.”

“You’re delusional and projecting your own feelings onto me. You said it yourself. I’m the _bad guy_ , remember? Again, I’m sorry if—”

“Ah. See, right there!” Poe shouted, sounding triumphant, honestly a bit mad with it. “You think I’m imagining some person you aren’t from absolutely nothing? Are you telling me the person you were when we flew away in that TIE together would have ever considered apologizing? _To me?_ You just did it twice! You don’t even know who you are which means you can’t tell me I’m wrong about who I think you might be.”

It was true that Hux wasn’t quite certain exactly who he was anymore—not a general now, certainly nowhere near being an emperor, but still, he was sure, very, very far from being a member of some sad toy soldier army like the Resistance. 

“I was being polite,” he said, trying to redirect from talk of his confused identity.

“Again, to me? I thought you hated me,” Poe said, his face much softer than anyone’s should ever be when saying those words.

“I . . . do,” Hux said, but his eyes darted away as he did so.

“Yeah? Say it to my face then.”

“I’d rather not.”

“You mean you can’t.”

“Stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“No, _you are_. You want to prove you’re the same as you were before?  Look at me and tell me you hate me, and I’ll believe you.”

“What? The other times weren’t enough for you?” Hux said, rolling his eyes like the only reason he wasn’t doing it was because it was too boring, not because it was untrue.

Poe threw his hands up, actually laughing out loud, and then shouted, “The other times you weren’t in love with me, Dumb ass!”

“I’m not _in love with you_ , you idiot!” Hux said, his head snapping fully back in Poe’s direction, an honestly unconscious look of disgust on his face, not sure if was more insulted by Poe’s accusation or by being called a dumb ass at the end of it.

“Oh yeah? How do you know?”

“I don’t need to explain myself to you or answer that question as it’s preposterous.”

“How many times have you been in love?” Poe asked, like he was inquiring about  something dull like Hux’s favorite color.

“That’s none of your business.”

“Because the answer is never?” Poe asked. Then in a gentler tone when Hux’s face betrayed just how right he was. “I’m not trying to make you sad. All I’m saying is if you’ve never been in love before, then how would you know if you were or not?”

“I’d just . . . know.” 

“And yet here you are, saying it isn’t true but displaying all of the usual symptoms,” Poe assessed, sweeping his hand through the air in front of him like he was gesturing to a row of objects that proved what he was saying.

“‘Symptoms’? You make it sound like a disease.”

“Yeah, that’s why they call it ‘love sick’ when someone’s acting the way you are.”

“Which is _how_ , exactly?” Hux asked, trying to sound exasperated but not quite succeeding. He felt a little out of breath again, like he’d been pushed to the ground, shocking all of the air from his lungs.

“Well, let’s see . . .” Poe said, stepping closer in a way that seemed almost like how you’d approach someone you intended to fight. “Now that I think about it, actually, you were probably in love with me those other times, too. I mean, you honestly could have done literally nothing the entire time we’ve been here and let me look for food and dig the ship out and do whatever else but instead you insist on following me all over the place—”

“I was _trying_ to get us off this disgusting planet as fast as possible so I could get away from you!” Hux said, near shouting himself, wanting to step away but feeling it would appear like defeat to do so and this wasn’t a fight he intended to lose. 

“Meanwhile taking every possible opportunity to be in my presence,” Poe said. “Hanging on my every word—”

“I do not do that!”

“Oh, yes, you do. I’m sure you’ve told yourself it’s because you enjoy coming up with clever new insults to hurl at me, but really you just like hearing me talk.”

“That’s more delusional than you thinking I . . . care about you,” Hux said, unable to make the word “love” cross his lips a second time. “Why would _anyone_ want to listen to you talk? You never shut up and you hardly ever say anything interesting making it that much worse to have to listen to you all fucking day long.”

Poe smiled, it was slow at first but widened into a near grin with a huffing, quiet laugh at the end.

“I don’t disagree with you,” he said. “I never said I was interesting, I just said you listen to everything I say. Which you’ve just proved you do by saying I ‘hardly ever’ say anything interesting.”

“I’d like you to shut up now.”

“I know you would, but I’m not gonna. You might think everything else I say is stupid, but you have to listen to this. It’s important even if I never see you again after leaving here. I’ll feel a lot better about letting you go if I know you’re reasonable enough to admit your feelings about me. I prefer to fight sane men if I have to fight. Madness is dangerous in war.”

“Oh, so now if I don’t say I’m in love with you that makes me _crazy?_ The size of your ego is astonishing.”

“This isn’t about ego,” Poe said, shaking his head.

“Pick whatever word you want then, but thinking everyone you meet is in love with you is—”

“I didn’t say _everyone_. Just you.”

“I don’t even _know_ you,” Hux said weakly, thinking that this was the exact same argument he would have used privately with himself if Poe were somehow right.

“Yeah, well, love doesn’t exactly work that way, Hux.”

“What does it matter how it works? What does love get you? Other than turning you into the kind of person who would let someone like me go after seeing something . . . _like that!_ ” Hux shouted, pointing unnecessarily at the sky.

“Well, I couldn’t keep you somewhere you wouldn’t want to be. And I don’t think it would be stupid to let you go now. You’re not the kind of man who would do that thing up there. Not anymore.”

“You’re wrong.”

Poe stepped forward faster than Hux could react to and placed his hand directly into the center of Hux’s chest, over his heart. He said nothing, but his attempt at a point was clear enough. He was trying to fall back on his belief in the reality of one’s own feelings as the guide for your life over logic and factual information.

“Why are you doing this right now?” Hux asked, resisting the urge to bring his hand up and place it over Poe’s, maybe to see if he could feel his own heart beating through the back of it.

“Because _this_ is what my side is fighting the war over, Hux. And it matters more than ever now. There has to be a reason to live, something after the fighting stops that makes it worth having fought. It’s this,” he said, patting Hux’s chest lightly for emphasis. Though the touch was slight, it felt like a series of electric shocks which careened around inside of Hux’s cells rebounding and multiplying and making him feel like the planet had begun vibrating underfoot.

He pushed Poe’s hand off him slowly, his skin tensing when this caused Poe’s fingertips to brush over his stomach before disengaging.

“What I live for won’t exist after the war,” he said and turned back towards the trees. He shouldn’t have left alone, the chance that he would become lost without Poe’s navigational abilities was high.

But he didn’t get lost. He did leave their usual path and ended up on the edge of the little moat-like lake which surrounded their hut and had to skirt it to get back to the path to avoid having to wade across which he actually considered briefly out of irritation.

He went inside and, with the kind of purposefulness he tended to revert to when under extreme stress, he went about a makeshift version of what he did on the ship during any sort of upset: bathing compulsively until his skin felt matte and stripped of all of its oils. He filled the pot that had hung over the fire from that first day when he’d made soup in it and heated it, adding to the fire to make it as hot as possible. He knelt next to it, staring into its silvery surface like a worshipper praying at a shrine until it broke up into chaos. He removed it carefully, using the edge of one of the frayed blankets and carried it to the back of the hut into that little room with the rough bathtub in it. He poured it in carefully, as calmly as you’d empty liquid metal into a mold so not a drop was lost. He refilled the pot from the tap and added it on top. It wasn’t much, but the water from the sink was warm that day due to a lack of rain. It still steamed attractively even with the new water added. He undressed and knelt again next to the basin, not feeling right somehow about trying to fold himself into it.

He waited for the surface of the water to settle into absolute stillness before touching it, and then when he did he approached it like the water was solid, something he could press against. He just barely made contact with the pads of his fingers at first and was lowering his hands slowly so no ripples were created in the dark water like he was sticking his hands through one of the windows on his ship out into space . . .

“You’ll burn yourself,” Poe said, his hands appearing and gently closing on Hux’s wrists from behind. He lifted them, giving Hux a chance to resist him. When he didn’t shake Poe off Hux found his arms being folded across his own chest, Poe’s arms encasing them in the same gesture. “Is that what you were trying to do?”

“Huh?” Hux felt dazed. He’d never been interrupted during his bathing rituals before.

“Were you trying to hurt yourself on purpose?”

Hux didn’t know exactly and made a strange series of movements inside the cage of Poe’s embrace—shrugging like a negation but nodding as well and finishing with a sharp head shake.

"I don't know how to go back now," he said, though this wasn’t technically an answer to Poe’s question.

"Don't then," Poe whispered, his words warm against the base of Hux's neck. His arms loosened and his hands went to Hux’s shoulders, coaxing a turn which Hux consented to, the maneuver slightly complicated by the limited space in the room.

“Don’t go back,” Poe said, taking Hux’s face in his hands and kissing him. Hux responded to this kiss wantonly, climbing Poe’s thighs to straddle him, digging his hands in Poe’s hair. 

Poe pushed him back after a few seconds and Hux made a strange, desolate noise, wanting to cling. But Poe wasn’t rejecting him, just removing his own clothing. He made Hux lift his hips so he could shove his own suit down. It wasn’t possible to take it off entirely in his kneeling position but it was enough.

“There’s not really room in here for that . . .” Hux said, though it wasn’t a real protest. It was what he wanted, to escape, to be devoured the way Poe had done before.

“We just have to go slower . . . be more careful,” Poe said, bringing Hux back down to his lap, pressing warm, soft kisses up his throat on the way.

Hux wanted to make a derogatory comment in regard to this, hating the idea of some drawn out, silly-feeling encounter. He just wanted Poe to fuck him into forgetfulness, to say horrible, filthy things like he had the first time.

He pulled one of Poe’s hands off his neck and wrapped his mouth around his first two fingers. Poe moaned, slid his hand into Hux’s hair to tilt his head back a bit, opening his mouth wider. He stuck his fingers in deeper until Hux almost gagged which he didn’t mind. It felt degrading which was exactly what he wanted—maybe redemption through humiliation. He closed his lips around them and sucked hard, his teeth catching on Poe’s knuckle. Poe swore and pulled his fingers free abruptly.

“I should have known you’d be a biter,” he said, his fingers digging into Hux’s thigh as he pulled him forward sharply, pushing on his chest so his neck was resting on the edge of the basin.

Hux tipped his hips up eagerly, spreading his legs to give Poe access, not caring how he appeared even. Poe overlapped his fingertips and twisted, inserting them together, pushing them in until the bent knuckles of his other fingers prevented him from going deeper. Then he jammed his free hand under Hux’s armpit and dragged him back up, making him balance on his knees.

“Fuck yourself,” he ordered. “Show me how much you want me.”

He obeyed without complaint, riding Poe’s fingers, his face hot with shame and hidden in the crook of one elbow wrapped over Poe’s shoulder for leverage. 

“Do you want me to make you come like this?” Poe asked, one arm looping around Hux’s waist. 

“No,” Hux gasped, not quite sure he wouldn’t though, as Poe was now holding him in place and fucking him with heavy, even strokes bending his fingers at the end of each one.

“Because you want my cock inside you?” he whispered, his lips grazing Hux’s throat as he spoke. 

“Y-yes. Yes.”

“Is that all you want?”

“Huh?”

“Would you go with me if I asked you to?” Poe asked, stilling his hand, his fingertips curled and applying maddening pressure to Hux’s prostate.

“What?” Hux panted, trying to fight Poe’s hold, only managing to rock his hips slightly despite having said he didn’t want to finish that way, his body wanting to rush into the closest available oblivion.

“If I asked you to go with me instead of back to your people, would you?” Poe asked, holding him in place easily. “Answer now while you’ll be honest.”

“ _Honest?_ ” Hux repeated, frustrated by both the this interruption and its content. “I’m two seconds from coming, I’d say anything right now!”

“You’ll be honest,” Poe insisted.

“I—don’t kno—what? _Are_ you asking?”

“I’m asking,” Poe said, removing his fingers and guiding Hux down into his lap. “Go with me, Hux. Leave here with me and go where I go.”

“Which is where?” Hux asked, still concealing his face, pressing his forehead into his arm like he was shielding his eyes from the sun. 

“Home,” Poe said, reaching between them again to position himself, coaxing Hux to sink down onto him.

“Your home is with the Resistance?” Hux asked, his voice sounding compressed, his attention split between adjusting to Poe’s cock and adjusting to his invitation, both feeling just as intrusive, edging on painful.

“For now, yes. But I won’t tell them who you are. I’ll protect you, I promise. I’ll hide you if that’s what you want,” Poe said, his hands traveling over Hux’s body like he was illustrating that offer of guardianship, spelling its terms out on his skin.

“Sounds dishonest . . .” Hux said in a shaky voice he couldn’t control, bracing one hand against the ceiling so he could push against it, increasing the speed and force he was moving his hips.   

Normally, he didn’t actually endorse lying. He preferred truth even if if wasn’t pleasant but the idea that Poe Dameron, the poster boy for the Resistance, would actively betray them for him—even in the relatively innocent way Hux was sure he meant—was exhilarating.

“You haven’t figured out yet that I’m not as pure as you thought I was?” Poe said, sliding his arms up and hooking his fingers on Hux’s shoulders, using his hold on there to make sure he was in control of all of it when he started thrusting.

“Oh fuck,” Hux breathed, his head falling back, the words drawn out wispy and choked.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Poe said, his fingers wrapped so far around Hux’s shoulders the tips were digging into the hollow above his collarbone, slowing his thrusts in a maddening way.

“Okay!” Hux said in a gasp. “Okay. I’ll go. I’ll go wherever you want. Just . . . let me fucking come already!”

Poe chuckled and readjusted his grip to a slightly looser one, leaning forward so Hux’s back was bent over the bath. His hands stayed on Hux’s shoulders, but his  forearms slipped apart making the stone edge of the basin scrape Hux’s back with every movement. Hux moaned a series of half-voiced, broken encouragements, thinking almost a little too coherently that he was disappointed the only mirror they had was the tiny shaving mirror so he wouldn’t be able to use it to examine his back after, to see the little trenches being dug there.

“You don’t belong to the First Order anymore,” Poe said hotly against his ear. “Now you’re just mine.” His fingers curled inward as he spoke, causing his nails to bite into Hux’s skin. Hux moaned loudly, right on the edge of finishing, sure by the way Poe sounded that he was as well.

“Say you’re mine,” Poe commanded, a hitch in his words suggesting that he may have actually come saying it. He hadn’t stopped thrusting though, his grip on Hux’s shoulders as steady as before. “Say it or I’ll stop fucking you and hold your hands so you can’t get yourself off either.”

“Uhn. _Fuck._ I’m yours. I’m yours, I swear. Please don’t stop,” Hux gasped, his spine arching more dramatically as he came, the stone grinding up his back and catching him sharply under the shoulder blades.

Poe lifted him from that position carefully afterwards, all sweetness again, bringing Hux back into his lap, his arm circling Hux’s slender waist like he was concerned now with not breaking him. Hux flinched when he felt water drip unexpectedly onto his back, stinging across the open scratches. Poe had dipped his hand into the bath and was trickling warm water carefully over his skin. He cautiously swiped in a couple of places getting a light hiss from Hux on one of the ones directly over his spine.

“I don’t mind accommodating this kind of thing a little bit if you really like it,” Poe said. “But I’m not ever going to hurt you seriously just so you know.”

“I know you won’t,” Hux said, watching Poe’s profile out of the corner of his eye as he worked, continuing to wash his wounds with devoutly gentle sweeps of his fingertips

“I’m not talking about you trusting me. I mean I’m not going to hurt you a lot even if that’s something you want . . .” Poe said, leaning his cheek on Hux’s shoulder for a moment.

“Oh. That’s fine.”

“No broken bones.”

Hux made a face to indicate that wasn’t something he wanted.

“And I won’t hit you in the face ever so don’t ask.”

“Okay.”

“Everything else we can talk about . . .” he said, lifting his head and grinning a little bit.

“Right. For future reference, though,” Hux said when Poe had redipped his fingers and painted a fresh line of water it over his skin. “That’s a little too warm to make the bleeding stop—”

“I’m not trying to make it stop,” Poe said, leaning forward and making a sharp movement behind Hux’s back, closing his eyes, a muscle in his jaw twitching like he’d clenched his teeth as well.

He brought his hand back into Hux’s field of vision displaying a short gouge in the soft skin of his wrist. He said nothing and put his other hand up like he was telling Hux not to speak either which was unnecessary because he was already shocked in silence. They both paused, waiting, until tiny jewels of blood had welled up and were poised to break and run down his arm. He leaned in just before they did and forced Hux’s lips apart with his tongue then pressed his bleeding wrist to Hux’s spine and dragged it up over the cuts there, causing them to burn and making Hux’s hips jump where he was still impaled on Poe’s fading erection.

Poe brought his wrist between them again, now smeared with an indistinguishable mixture of their blood, the red looking darker than fresh blood normally would have with the olive tone of Poe’s skin underneath it. He bent his head and licked some of it off with the flat of his tongue, watching Hux’s face as he did it. He flipped his arm, offering the mess to Hux who grabbed at it with both hands, intending to copy him and then changing his mind and grabbing Poe’s face instead to kiss him, hoping he’d be able to taste their blood in his mouth still.

He could.

And it tasted like home.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Formal apologies to: Master Yoda. 
> 
> Zero apologies to: Fake Nerd Boys who think gays are ruining Star Wars. 
> 
> Dick-in-cheek apologies to: Everyone I’ve dragged into this hell with me.


	7. This Is Dagobah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I'm taking a million years to post new chapters, and it makes me sweeeeeeaty. Not like good, smut-penning sweaty either. Like nasty, just got face-touched by that creepy "buddy" we all had in high school sweaty. 
> 
> Anyway, on that sexy note . . . chapter seven:

“Stop,” Hux said with an irritated exhalation, using the back of his arm to wipe at his forehead. 

“Stop what?” Poe asked, feigning innocence. “I’m not doing anything . . .”

“You’re _staring_ again.”

“What are you gonna do? Call your Stormtroopers to come and arrest me?” Poe said, putting one hand on the—now far less tilted—wing of their ship and leaning there looking smug.

“You’re the worst,” Hux said shaking his head, too focused on how close they were to being done to let Poe derail him with flirting.

“I’m just trying to make you _really mad_ again like that one day . . .” Poe said, brushing the backs of his fingers over some of the dried mud still dusting the black solar panels in a way only he could have made look seductive. Hux could almost feel those fingers like they were already on him, doing the same thing to his throat or—

“Good luck with that,” he said shortly, looking away before he could get too drawn in. “I don’t actually get mad that oft—” He cut off and stood up from his bent over position when he felt something cold land on his lower back. He turned and found Poe leaning down with his fingers trailing just under the surface of the water, still surrounded by ripples from where he’d obviously just disturbed it by flipping his hand up to toss some of it at Hux’s back. “Seriously?” Hux said, twisting to examine his wet shirt, trying to follow up on his statement about not angering easily by keeping his tone in check.

Poe grinned at him and moved his hand back a little ways, threatening to repeat his attack.

“I am not going to have a _water fight_ with you. Don’t be a child,” Hux scolded, but with his shoulder turned away protectively to instinctively shield his front.

“It would really be more of a mud fight, there’s not that much water left,” Poe said, bending lower until his arm disappeared into the water halfway to his elbow.

“Don’t.”

“Can’t get much dirtier . . .” Poe said nodding to Hux whose clothes were about as soiled as they could get, but currently _dry_ , at least, which was how he preferred them.

“I can get _a lot_ dirtier,” Hux said, hoping the sexual undertone of what he’d said would be enough of a distraction to end this idiocy.

It wasn’t. Poe just grinned at him and stood, now with a wet handful of that grainy green mud. “I’d love to see that. Exactly how mad do you have to be first?”

He lunged forward and Hux spun, intending to run for shelter behind the wing, but not quite making a full turn before he tripped and landed on one hip half out of the tiny puddle now covering only the very bottommost curve of the wing. Poe was standing over him a moment later, laughing, one hand still muddy but no longer filled with mud at least. He offered Hux his clean hand reminding him of the day they’d fought briefly right after the crash and how terrified he’d been that Poe would discover he was turned on by being pinned to the ground. It was unfortunate that he was in no mood to repeat it now that Poe had admitted to liking it as well, but it did at least inspire what he felt would be appropriate revenge for Poe’s cancelled attack.

Hux took the hand and waited until he had one foot solidly under him for leverage before yanking sharply and using Poe’s falling weight to push himself to the side and out of the way. Hux ended up fully sitting in mud as a result, but it was worth it as Poe was now significantly muddier than he was having landed far less gracefully.

“Happy now?” Hux asked, gesturing at both of them as he tried to stand. Poe grabbed at his ankle and yanked him back down, crawling up his body so they were side by side. Hux had managed to stop himself from landing flat on his back but couldn’t save the rest of his clothing which hadn’t already been filthy as lukewarm water and mud swirled up the back of his shirt.

“Yeah,” Poe said, propping his head in one hand like he was reclining on a sunny beach and not in a gritty mud puddle. “Yeah, I’m pretty happy,” he said, his face turning less playful, smiling in a way which looked a little sad despite his words.

He put out his other hand, which was much cleaner than the one he was leaning on but still dirty, and brushed Hux’s cheek with his thumb in a gesture which might have been pleasant if it hadn’t also painted a grainy stripe of mud across his skin.

“Are you happy?” Poe asked, his hand dropping to lay flat on Hux’s chest, leaving a watery handprint on the front of his shirt, finishing off the complete destruction of his outfit though he was sure that hadn’t been the intent.

“Happy?” he echoed like he was testing a brand new word. The question wasn’t a difficult one but something about it was upsetting. He just barely stopped himself from laying all the way down in contemplating it, forgetting for a second where he was.

“You’re allowed to be you know,” Poe said.

“You’re giving me permission?” Hux asked, a small amount of amusement in his voice. He wouldn’t have been surprised at all if that’s what Poe had meant as he frequently acted like he owned the whole world and was entitled to make bold declarations like this about it.

“No, you don’t need that. I don’t think I could possibly control anything about you,” Poe said, inhaling deeply like this idea frustrated him. “Not that I’d try even I could. I’m not _Kylo_ ,” he joked, and Hux smiled a little.

“No, you’re not,” said a voice so loud and close that both of them flinched. It had been so long since either of them had heard any voice that wasn’t the other’s that the effect would have been startling even if it hadn’t been perhaps the most unwelcome one in the galaxy—low, slightly distorted and filtered through a voice box intended to transform the wearer’s natural voice into one designed to cause horror in the listener.

Hux recovered faster, maybe spurred by panic, and was on his feet in seconds facing the tall, black-robed figure standing on the bank of the drained lake at the place where the greenery slipped away into silt.

“Kylo,” he gasped, terror not of him directly but of what he might have seen, wrapping around him like a leaden cloak.

“I’m been looking for you,” Kylo said in that completely unaccented, impossible to interpret, electronically-altered voice.

“Uh, for how long?” Hux asked, not knowing what else to say.

“Since you vanished. I thought you’d been taken. I see I was wrong.”

“You weren’t wrong. I was . . .”

“And now?”

“What do you mean?” Hux asked, only thinking of stalling, his mind feeling like a malfunctioning datapad, information rushing through it too fast—distorted, pixilated, unreadable.

Kylo reached one gloved hand up and pressed on the side of his mask under his jaw. It released with a pneumatic hiss, the face plate shifting out and down. He pulled it off with one hand and tucked it under his arm in a way which struck Hux as bizarrely formal. It was not a thing Hux had ever seen him do before.

“I thought you were dead,” Kylo said in a voice that pierced Hux with a bright, unexpected guilt deeper than any he’d felt before. He’d told Poe that he hadn’t expected Kylo to search for him and further that he wouldn’t want it either. Both were true at the time but based almost entirely on the assumption that Kylo wouldn’t be much affected by his disappearance. He saw now that he was very clearly wrong. Kylo looked tired, shattered—like he hadn’t slept at all in the weeks since Hux had last seen him.

“Well, I’m not dead,” Hux said unnecessarily. And then, carefully, “You were looking this whole time? I mean, continually?”

“Of course I was,” Kylo said like this was as given as Hux’s hair staying red while he slept. “What kind of question is that?”

“I . . . didn’t expect that you would . . .”

“You mean you didn’t _want me to_ ,” he said, bitterness all over his words, in his posture, in the way his hand twitched frighteningly close to the hilt of his saber hanging on his belt.

“No,” Hux said, feeling a lie would be best until Kylo had calmed a bit, if that was even possible. “I just—”

“ _You were kissing him!_ ” Kylo said, his voice rising into a shout, his sallow face tinged with red.

Hux cringed like Kylo had spit in his face. How long had he been watching them? They hadn’t kissed that afternoon that he could recall. He tried to sort through all that had happened that day, tried to remember what they’d talked about and he couldn’t bring up anything specific or obviously damning. 

“I almost wish you _were_ dead,” Kylo said then in a soft, wavering voice that made Hux feel he might throw up. It hadn’t sounded like a threat but like Kylo was confessing that he loved Hux the way Hux had insisted when asked that he did not.

“Well, I see _you’re_ just as charming as the last time I saw you . . .” Poe said, and Hux groaned and dropped his head down into his palm. If Kylo hadn’t been truly bent on murder before, Poe’s smart ass mouth would have pushed him over the edge.

“Poe, don’t,” he said, forcing his hands to stay hanging useless and non-threatening at his sides because the urge to grab onto Poe was so strong.

“I said I’d protect you,” Poe said earnestly. “I didn’t mean only from my side.”

This was so sweet and so stupid that it made Hux’s chest ache madly. There was no protecting him or anyone else from Kylo. He was as deadly as Starkiller, only on a smaller scale.

“He doesn’t need _you_ to do that!” Kylo said, shouting again, louder, his words sounding torn around the edges. He finally dropped his helmet and with a swift movement unusually elegant for him he snapped his saber free of its clip and switched it on as soon as it was free of his side.

Hux straightened his shoulders, all traces of fear and apology vanishing. Kylo showing up now, acting _indignant_ and like Hux had _wronged_ him was enraging. Kylo had terrorized his ship without consequence for years. He’d stomped around demanding things and hurting people and never seemed to care about anything at all beyond his own petty vendettas—even if his feelings of concern were sincere, they were too late in being revealed and something about that flaming blade, spitting orange sparks into the vegetation at Kylo’s feet made him feel suddenly galvanized with anger. Kylo had used his powers to ruin what he couldn’t control and his weapon, which was as unstable and violent as he was, was a representation of all of this.

“Are you going to kill me now, Kylo?” Hux asked, with the kind of calm, authoritative voice he’d used when he still wore the clothing of a First Order general, like he would have if he were giving an order for Kylo to do it.

“No,” Kylo said softly, almost sweetly. “Not you.” He put up his free hand, his fingers crooked into an open cage. Poe made a choking sound and Hux knew, because he’d seen it done before, that Kylo would use his powers to jerk Poe forward into his hand, maybe intending to simply crush the life out of him instead of using his crackling blade to do it.

Hux stepped sideways before that could happen and Poe slammed into his back, almost knocking him over. He could feel Kylo’s power still in effect, like he’d moved into a beam of light, interrupting but not stopping its path. He felt its focus shift to him, but not to his throat. It gripped his jaw carefully, like Kylo might have done directly with his hand if he were holding Hux’s face preparing to kiss him.

Hux reached back and fumbled for Poe’s hands, just needing to touch his skin one final time. It was half apology and half some desperate form of affection he’d never experienced before. He only managed to find one of Poe’s hands and hooked his other arm around Poe’s body, fingers tensing on his back like he could meld them together. Now they would both die, but he wouldn’t go out a coward, he wouldn’t go out denying his connection to the one person in his whole life he was ever sure cared about him.

He did close his eyes, not wanting to see it coming, wanting his final sensations to be the warmth of Poe’s fingers, the brush of Poe’s exhale against his back, chilly as it passed through his wet clothing—

Poe was squeezing his hand forcefully but not painfully, and when nothing happened, Hux opened his eyes cautiously and found there was now another person there, standing between them and Kylo who was still on the bank, his lightsaber hanging a bit funnily by his side like he didn’t know what to do with it.

It was a girl, not a child clearly, but short enough that Hux could easily see over her head to Kylo’s shocked, angry face.

She was also carrying a lightsaber. One with a silver and black handle and a crisp, unwavering blue blade. Her stance was not one of a practiced sword fighter, but it still looked dangerous, charged, and Hux unconsciously pressed back into Poe’s chest though she wasn’t poised to attack them.

“Are you Poe Dameron?” she asked in a light, bouncy-sounding voice, still facing forward but obviously not talking to Kylo who she seemed to already be familiar with. She didn’t wait for an answer before adding, “General Organa sent me to find you.”

“Oh, okay,” Poe said, casually accepting this like it was completely normal for Organa to send out lightsaber-wielding teenage girls on rescue missions.

“You should go,” she said, still facing forward so Hux wasn’t sure who she was talking to, her obvious lack of fear towards Kylo making it possible she was actually telling _him_ to leave.

Kylo remained motionless as she spoke though he’d raised his weapon back to swinging height at some point.

“Our ship is that way.” She pointed off to her left. “Just go straight, you can’t miss it. I’ll take care of him,” she said in a way that sounded less like she was going to fight him so much as put him to bed like a friend who had drank far too much and just needed to sleep it off.

It was a truly ridiculous suggestion for her to make, Hux thought. Kylo would kill her in a half second in a real fight. She wouldn’t even have come to his shoulder if they’d been standing next to each other on solid ground and she was just generally small and soft-looking, unlike Kylo who wasn’t just taller but also bulky and extremely practiced with his own weapon. She was currently holding hers like it was a random object she’d grabbed off of a table to protect herself from someone breaking into her house in the middle of the night.

Poe seemed far more trusting of her and her abilities than Hux was and he’d stepped out to the side, pulling Hux in the direction she had indicated. Hux was fairly sure this action was based on his annoying confidence in General Organa’s leadership, but it wasn’t exactly the time to argue about that.

Hux felt sick leaving, but he couldn’t stay. He didn’t want to see Kylo die if that’s what it was going to come to and _he_ didn’t want to die either. Also he was sure the girl was also a force user, it emanated from her in nearly tangible waves—it was less focused than what he felt from Kylo, more organic and untethered, somehow feeling oceanic in its depth.

Hux looked back when he heard a crashing hiss come from behind them. Kylo and the girl were fighting, and he saw the source of the noise as their saber blades connected and crackled against each other, spitting red and blue sparks into the air.

Poe halted suddenly and Hux nearly fell from the lack of warning.

“What?” he panted, hoping Poe wasn’t considering going back. The girl seemed to be holding her own so far and there was nothing either of them could do. Vaguely Hux was aware his wish to not return was selfish not just in wanting not to die himself but in not wanting to have to watch the girl die at Kylo’s hand. She’d saved them, and he felt like his gratitude for that would be spoiled if he had to see it happen. Of all of the selfish things he’d felt in his life, of which there were many to choose from, this was the ugliest.

Poe had dropped his hand and was waving Hux onward in the direction their rescuer had sent them. He was going back. Hux grabbed at him, not caring at all about being selfish in regard to Poe’s safety. Hux wasn’t some noble hero and would rather some stranger, even one who’d put herself in danger for him, died over Poe.

“The books,” Poe said, shaking him off carefully. “General Organa will want them.”

“The _books?_ ” Hux said with an exasperation he’d never have guessed he’d ever have towards the written word. “Are you insane? They’re just books! We have to go _now_ befo—” he cut himself off not wanting to say that what he expected was for the girl to die any minute and then for Kylo to come after them again.

But Poe was already turned and dashing through the trees. Hux followed him, enraged in a way he wasn’t sure he’d ever been in his life. He shouted Poe’s name before realizing it was a dangerous thing to have done, as it would alert Kylo to their location, but it was torn from him.

The most direct route back to the hut took them diagonally away from the area around the TIE and Hux ran without looking where he was going for a few seconds to scan the trees for any sign of the two force users. There was none. The woods were silent and this was much more terrifying than anything else. If there were no more sounds it meant someone was dead. Some part of him he wasn’t sure existed before he’d meet Poe recoiled from the idea of it being either one of them.

He had lost sight of Poe for several nauseating seconds but found him again when Poe broke from the tree line onto the path suddenly and deftly leapt the little gap between the bank to the edge of the island instead of using the little stepping stone to cross the water. Though it was absolutely inappropriate for Hux to be thinking any such thing right then, he noted distantly that seeing Poe perform that unexpected, perfect leap turned him on incredibly.

He slowed as Poe vanished into the little curved doorway, and then stopped, placing his hands on his knees and breathing in harsh, painful gasps. Though he exercised regularly, it wasn’t _this_ type of exercise and for a few moments he thought he might black out. He resisted this with every ounce of energy he had left because as soon as this possibility occurred to him he had an image of Poe finding him that way and carrying him to the ship unconscious. Even if he wouldn’t be awake for it, the thought was too humiliating.

He waited for what felt like too long for Poe to reemerge, trying to breathe as quietly as possible so he could listen around him. Then just at the point where he started to fear Kylo may have been for some reason crouched inside waiting for them, Poe’s face appeared back in the doorway again. This welcome sight was cut off almost immediately after by Kylo stepping neatly from the trees into the path with his back to Hux.

Hux was closer to Kylo than Kylo was to Poe, but it wouldn’t take long for that to be untrue even if Kylo didn’t use the force as he could cover that distance in only a few strides. Hux shouted, not a name or even a word, just some formless vowel sound and starting running again. It was almost more like stumbling fast because he was completely exhausted and also felt like he’d outrun his own bones and was barely being held together by what was left. He didn’t know what he’d thought he was going to do, but it certainly wasn’t what he ended up doing. Kylo, for some reason, hadn’t moved when he shouted and was only about to take a step just as Hux reached him so he wasn’t a moving target at least when Hux jumped, catching him around the neck from behind.

Kylo swore, unbalanced for a moment, until Hux fell off his back, hitting the ground so hard he didn’t register that he was injured for several moments. There was a long, smoking gash in his arm where it had encountered one of the little side blades of Kylo’s saber. He couldn’t tell if it hurt just yet because he was too stunned by what he’d done and what he might have to do next. Kylo had spun slightly to stare at him, his face absolutely transformed from its usual pouty, restless expression into one of full, black hatred.

_Now_ Hux would die. He was sure by that look that whatever Kylo’s feelings may have been for him previously, they were intensely the opposite now and Kylo would probably even enjoy the kill. Hux didn’t regret what he’d done though which distracted him into a sort of strange lucidity in which he felt like he’d lived an entire life without ever knowing anything real at all. He had not thought himself the type of person to do something like put himself in peril for someone else, but there he was, on his back in the wet undergrowth of a planet whose name he still didn’t know, waiting for death while gazing peacefully into the leafy ceiling of the trees and hoping that, if nothing else, Poe would get away while Kylo was busy murdering him.

“Ben!” Another new voice came echoing out of the trees. The fact that this planet which had been completely devoid of all intelligent life for a full month aside from him and Poe was now being virtually flooded with people struck Hux as hysterical, and he had to clap both of his hands over his mouth to stop from laughing out loud like the full blown lunatic he’d feared he may be becoming anyway.

Kylo had frozen half-turned towards Hux and then he spun away again and reentered the trees in a way which, though he wasn’t ever especially graceful, seemed clumsy and uncalculated. He didn’t really have a lot of time to think about it though as Poe reached him about then and was kneeling over him, looking very shaken. His desire to laugh vanished on seeing Poe there and alive and—trying to do exactly what Hux had pictured right before Kylo had appeared. He had his arm under Hux’s shoulders and was about to slide his other under his knees when Hux forgot his relief and slapped Poe’s hands away with uncoordinated but very determined swipes.

“No! I don’t need to be carried. I fucking have my legs still, you idiot,” he said, getting unsteadily to his feet. He let Poe hold his arm though because he was sure for a few seconds that he’d go back down if he didn’t.

“Are you ever going to stop calling me that?” Poe asked, smiling affectionately.

“As soon as you stop being an idiot, sure,” Hux promised.

Poe laughed, kissed his cheek, making Hux smile dumbly, having forgotten entirely that they were likely still in danger and there was very little about the situation which should inspire mirth. It was becoming increasingly hard to hold onto any sort of negative—

An older man with mostly grey hair and a face that looked like he wasn’t a stranger to fist fights had stepped from the trees on the opposite side of the path from where Kylo had disappeared. He looked like the kind of man who was once very handsome and was given the dignity of having his looks demoted respectfully to “rugged” instead of “ugly” as he’d aged. Hux felt like he was staring at what Poe might someday look like based on the way the man was dressed, the way he stood and this elemental cockiness he had about him even before he spoke.

“If one of you is Poe Dameron and you’d like to go home, then I suggest you get your ass on my ship in the next five minutes because that’s when it will be leaving, and I don’t intend to come back,” he said and then turned around without waiting for an answer and stalked off back the way he’d come.

Poe looked a little startled and Hux wondered if he had also recognized himself in the man’s demeanor. They followed, knowing how quickly it was possible to disappear into the landscape here. Poe jogged ahead a little until he was in earshot of the apparent owner of the craft which would take them away from this place.

“Wait, there was a girl—” he started.

“Yeah, I know. She’s back at the ship already. He just . . . knocked her out,” the man said and even Hux caught a note of tension in his voice that he identified as concern for the girl—it didn’t sound like romance, but definitely familial.

“Oh. That’s good. She really saved our butts back there,” Poe said complimentarily.

The man half turned, still walking, to display a grin that looked like pride and Hux guessed that if this girl wasn’t his daughter, she was like one to him.

“Yeah, she’s good at that sort of thing. You wouldn’t know it to look at her,” he said, shaking his head and continuing on without slowing his pace.

It wasn’t the kind of ship Hux was used to flying in—which meant that it was old and looked unsafe and just screamed that it belonged to someone who would side with the Resistance. It was grey, dirty and shaped generally like a massive disc. They followed him up the open ramp and were almost knocked back down it like a series of living dominoes by the girl who was barreling towards the exit at the same time they were about to step inside.

“There you are!” she yelled even though they were all within two feet of her. “I was—”

“Unconscious, yeah,” the man said going past her without inquiring about her well-being verbally, but Hux saw that he patted her shoulder as he crossed behind her headed for the cockpit. That’s when the illusion that Hux was looking at an older version of Poe was shattered. Poe would have hugged her.

She spun with him to talk to his back. “Ben was—”

“I saw him,” he said, waving his hand at her without looking around like he could swat her words out of the air to keep them from reaching him.

Ben? The only other person they had seen was Kylo, but that didn’t—

“Who’s—” Hux started to ask, but the girl cut him off.

“That’s Han,” she said apparently thinking Hux was interested in the name of their pilot and not in who they were calling Ben. She leaned in and added in a lower voice, “Han _Solo_ ,” like she was telling them a secret she’d been waiting excitedly to spill for years.

The name was only distantly familiar to Hux and not immediately placeable, but Poe reacted with the same kind of excitement as her, also trying to subdue it. “No shit?” he asked, leaning towards her like they were already best friends.

She was pretty in an awkward, young way, and Hux shifted his gaze away from them. He tamped down something he refused to label as jealousy as they whispered for a minute back and forth. Not really saying anything, more like they were congratulating each other for being mutually excited by their pilot’s identity.

“I’d better go,” she finally said apologetically but still smiling enthusiastically. “Co-pilot.” She gestured to herself without a trace of humility, clearly very proud of her position on the ship. That was more like Poe, Hux thought. That and her giddy, easy way of interacting with people. But maybe everyone in the Resistance was that way—just an entire army of cheery, smug doofuses sure of their own greatness despite any evidence to the contrary. Hux sincerely hoped not. He’d rather go back outside and take a lightsaber to face than deal with that for the rest of his life.

“Oh!” She said, spinning back not very gracefully, but somehow charmingly, halfway to the cockpit. “I’m Rey, by the way.”

“Poe.”

Hux froze. He didn’t know how much the Resistance knew about him or if they would recognize his name if he said it. Poe hadn’t, but—

“Brendol,” he said, spitting out his father’s name without thinking.

“Bren,” Poe shortened without a beat, winking at Hux in an annoying way Hux intended to find some small way to punish him for later. “He’s a First Order defector. Helped me escape.” He grinned while he said this, probably enjoying being able to make up whatever he wanted without Hux being in a position to protest just then.

“Really?” Rey said, her face lighting up in a way Hux found irritating.

“Oh yeah,” Poe added happily. “He _hates_ them. You should hear him talk about how awful it is and how much he thinks they’re all a bunch of complete bastards.”

Rey faltered at this, her face a mixture of confusion and sympathy. “Well, _we’re_ not like that,” she said finally like this was a bright side she wanted to be sure to pinpoint. “Welcome aboard.”

“Sorry, wait,” Hux said when she started to leave again. “Just . . . can you tell me what planet we’re on?” He felt like he needed to know and it felt important to know it before they lifted off. Naming the ground on which he’d lived for weeks, where he’d gotten to know Poe and not just as a lover, was necessary for him to accept all of it as real.

“This is Dagobah,” she said.

Hux mouthed the name and then collected himself enough to toss a thank you at her when it was maybe too late for her to hear it anyway.

There were probably seats somewhere close by, but Hux was too tired and worried to search for them. He sank to the floor and placed his back against a curved, uninviting piece of wall lined with thin black cables. Poe joined him without asking, sitting close with his thigh pressed comfortably along the length of Hux’s. Hux was reminded of how attracted he’d been to Poe’s jump across the moat, and he looked at his feet knowing he needed to get himself under control before they landed and he had to go about pretending to be who Poe had just lied to Rey that he was.

Poe reached over and took one of his hands, locking their fingers together comfortably. He brought it to his lips and placed a firm, steadying kiss there. Hux’s eyes darted to the empty passage where Han and Rey had gone, uncomfortable with the idea of anyone seeing someone displaying this type of affection for him publicly, like he still had a professional reputation to protect, respect to command.

“It’ll be okay,” Poe said softly.

“Will it?” Hux said, not like he wanted assurance, more like a challenge, like he wanted Poe to back up that promise with something other than him just _wanting_ or _feeling_ that it would be okay. He wanted to know how that was supposed to happen exactly since it was an insane idea that anything would be okay from this point.

“If you let it,” Poe said like the difference between utter disaster and a quiet life of no trouble was Hux just deciding not to be difficult about it.

“You’re illogical and maddening.”

“And handsome, too, I’ve heard,” Poe said, nudging the side of Hux’s leg with his own.

“You won’t be for long if you tell anyone else I spend my free time badmouthing the First Order . . .”

“So you’re agreeing you think I’m handsome?”

“Please don’t fish. It’s pathetic.”

“Can’t say it, huh?” Poe said teasingly.

“Stop it. You’re obviously very attractive, you hardly need me or anyone else to tell you that.”

“It means more coming from you since I really want _you_ to be attracted to me . . .”

Hux glanced at the hall again to ensure it was still empty before answering.

“I wouldn’t have . . . _fucked_ you if I didn’t find you attractive,” he said, most of the words so quiet they would have barely qualified as whispers under the standard definition.

“Mmm, I _love it_ when you say _fuck_ ,” Poe said, his breath warming Hux’s neck under his ear.

“You’re easily impressed.”

“It’s hot,” Poe corrected. “You are.”

Hux scoffed.

“ _Now_ who’s fishing?” Poe said, squeezing Hux’s hand.

“I didn’t even say anything!” 

“You made a sound like you don’t believe me. Doing that when someone compliments you is fishing.”

“I wasn’t.”

“It’s okay. You can. I’ll say it again any time. I’m not ashamed of you like you are of me.”

“I’m not ashamed of you,” Hux said quickly, the hard swallow which followed this declaration punctuating it with the opposite meaning. He didn’t want to be. It hurt him that Poe was right even on a small level. He didn’t think it would matter among Poe’s people as they all probably revered him, but it would matter in Hux’s world. He would be deeply embarrassed to be seen in even the most blandly suggestive moment with Poe in front of any of them.

Poe squinted at him with one eye, a lopsided smile accompanying it in an expression that absolutely devastated Hux with how much it made him realize how lost he would be without that face now.

“You’re a little bit ashamed,” Poe said, sounding truly pleased. Perhaps he took it as a compliment that he’d gotten Hux to be with him in spite of his own better judgement. “And you _are_ hot. Why do you think I chose you to kidnap in the first place?”

“I hope you’re joking right now, Dameron, because—”

“I am,” he said, which made Hux feel a little disappointment he hadn’t expected but which was wiped away when Poe added, “Mostly. Might as well have a hostage who’s nice to look at if you’re going to have one, you know?”

Hux shook his head wanting to appear merely exasperated, but internally he was elated at the things Poe was saying. He chewed his lip for a few seconds, trying to decide if he should finally ask something he’d been wondering since their first sexual encounter because of the things Poe had said to him. He figured he might as well, he felt like maybe he should try to get in as many things he wanted to say as possible just in case something went terribly wrong when they arrived and they were parted somehow.

“Do you . . . I mean, is who I am—or who I used to be, I guess—a turn on for you?” he asked, feeling that his face was flushed.

Poe didn’t hesitate in his answer. “Yup,” he said, the word popping decisively from his lips, his eyes dragging down Hux’s face and body in a way that made Hux have to adjust his position to keep any undue friction from being applied to his cock as the heat in his face had rushed downward under this attention. The next thing from Poe was said close to Hux’s ear again, his lips grazing the edge of it in a painfully insubstantial way. “Too bad we had to leave those stuffy clothes I found you in back on your ship. I would have enjoyed getting you out of them myself rather than only getting to watch. I would have been a lot less careful though. I doubt they would have been wearable again after, General . . .”

Hux clenched his teeth to stop a moan from spilling out of him, picturing quite vividly Poe’s hands pulling at his uniform’s crisp, expensive layers, breaking any resistant closures, causing seams to be dragged roughly across his skin maybe leaving friction burns. He also imagined other scenarios with himself in dominance, dressed all the way to his great coat with Poe on his knees, using that beautiful mouth on him while Hux dug a gloved hand into his hair and called him filthy names as he—

There was a footfall in the corridor and Hux tore his hand free from Poe’s and sat up, leaning forward slightly, not trusting that his flight suit was baggy enough to hide his erection entirely.

Rey’s sweet, bright face popped into view. “We’ll be there soon. It’s a short jump to D’Qar. Just wanted to give you a head’s up before we went into hyperspace.”

“Thanks,” Poe said, smiling warmly at her, looking completely relaxed and unflustered. Hux just nodded, wishing he could also hide that his face was burning.

When they were alone again Hux asked in a low voice, “Do you think she could hear us?”

Poe shrugged, still looking unconcerned. “Probably not,” he said. “It’s loud in here.”

“I mean using the Force. She’s a Force user. Sometimes Kylo could pick up on things from very far away . . .”

“Huh. I guess I don’t know then. We’ve never had anyone like her before like I said.”

“Who _is_ she?” Hux asked though he knew Poe didn’t know any more than he did.

“I’m sure Organa will explain everything when we get there,” Poe said confidently.

“Right. The fabulous General Organa will fix it all,” Hux said derisively, even though he had her to thank for their rescue based on what Rey had said.

Poe raised an eyebrow. “You sound jealous . . .”

“Hardly. Like I’d want to command a dirty little army of untrained, reckless misfits.”

“I didn’t say that was the source of the jealousy,” Poe said with a smirk.

“What? What else would it be?”

“My loyalty to someone who isn’t you.”

“That’s nonsense. You’re not—”

Poe slid his arm across Hux’s back and yanked him close just as the ship made it’s leap to hyperspace, the combined motions making Hux feel like he’d left his organs back in Dagobah’s orbit.

“My loyalty to the Resistance exists as long as there’s a war on,” Poe said. “My loyalty to her will remain after but not in the same way. My loyalty to you is different, but not less. Your authority over me is far more integral. You now essentially own some very important parts of me . . .”

Hux’s eyes dropped automatically to Poe’s lap and then away again. Poe laughed lightly and turned Hux’s face back to his.

“That’s not what I meant, but that’s not in doubt either.”

He took Hux’s hand and placed it in the center of his own chest in a mirror of him doing this same thing to Hux after watching Starkiller’s attack in that field. Hux stared at his own hand, feeling Poe’s heart beating there under his ribs, under that mud-spattered shirt that reminded him of Poe’s words right before Kylo had found them, of that question which he hadn’t been given the chance to answer at the time.

“You asked if I was happy . . .”

“Yeah. But . . . you don’t have to answer that right now,” Poe said, a sudden note of insecurity in his voice that made Hux feel safer somehow, knowing it wasn’t just him who was unsure. “I mean, a lot just happened. I would understand if you weren’t feeling too great right no—”

“But I am,” Hux interrupted. “I feel fine, I mean. At least about Kylo. Do you think that’s callous?”

Poe shook his head. “I’m glad. I wouldn’t be offended though if seeing him was . . . difficult for you in some way.”

“It was. But not like that. I was surprised by the way he acted. I didn’t know he . . . cared like that,” Hux said, feeling that “care” wasn’t quite the right word for what Kylo felt, but not able to think of another way of explaining it.

“Because he never acted like that before or because you don’t think you’re worth caring about?” Poe asked, placing his hand on Hux’s to keep it in place over his heart.

“He’s never tried to murder me before, no,” Hux said, desperately wishing to avoid having to discuss the second part of what Poe had said.

“You shouldn’t have been surprised,” Poe said.

“That he tried to murder me?”

“That you could cause a reaction that intense in someone.”

“If it leads to people trying to kill me, I don’t think I’m interested . . .” Hux said, fearing where this was going and wanting to change the subject.

“I won’t ever try to kill you,” Poe said. Hux was glad he didn’t add anything else to this, but he couldn’t avoid the subtext in what Poe said, a suggestion that he understood in a personal way the level of passion that would be required for Kylo to react that way in regard to him.

“I can’t promise the same, sorry, you’re quite irritating most of the time. Very few would fault me,” he said, hoping to end this exchange with a joke.

“Liar,” Poe said cheerfully. “You’ve shown your true colors. Can’t take it back now. But don’t worry, I’ll keep your secret propensity for heroics to myself so you can maintain your reputation as an aloof genius above frivolous things like _feelings_.” 

He reached across Hux’s body to carefully take his arm and turn it to display the wound from Kylo’s saber there.

“That wasn’t heroics, it was stupidity,” Hux said, winching at the touch even though Poe was being gentle. It wasn’t very deep and it had been sealed by the heat of the blade that caused it.

“All heroics basically are,” Poe said.

“Even yours?”

“Especially mine,” he said emphatically, running his fingers down the soft inside of Hux’s arm where it wasn’t injured. “We’ll have someone in med look at this when we land.”

“I doubt there’s anything they can do for it. I’ll have an awful scar.”

“You can whine about it all you want, but I’m going to take care you until you don’t let me anymore.”

“I suppose it _could_ become infected,” Hux allowed reluctantly. “I mean, assuming you even _have_ medicine capable of treating that sort of thing.”

“No, we usually just hack whatever it is off in that case. But don’t worry, I’ll build you a sexy robot arm to replace it.”

“Good, I can use it to strangle you later.”

“Not my favorite kink,” Poe said with a grin. “But if you’re into it . . .”

“Is _everything_ sexual with you?” Hux scoffed, secretly hoping he might actually say yes, even jokingly, and then go on.

“You bring it out in me,” Poe said, his hand dropping from Hux’s arm to his thigh where he slid it up towards his hip.

Hux allowed himself a moment to enjoy being seduced before pulling Poe’s hand away with a nod towards to front of the ship to indicate they needed to stop before they were found like that. Poe kissed the edge of his jaw just under his ear and sat back against the wall, removing his arm as well and retaking Hux’s hand which he stowed between them out of sight.

The ship had slowed and was leveling off, preparing to land, and Hux knew it would be his last chance to say anything private for a while. He couldn’t collect his thoughts together enough to sort through them and pick the most important, though, so he wasn’t thinking about what he’d say when he spoke.

“Poe?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m pretty happy, too,” he said, the right thing for that moment presenting itself above the chaos of his mind and feeling true at least for those few seconds.

Poe didn’t respond verbally, just pressed his palm to Hux’s and held it there firmly as they touched down on the surface of another planet where Hux was sure he would feel just as out of place, trapped and desperate as he had on Dagobah.


	8. Actual Walls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I refuse to the use the word "refresher" ever until I die in any situation Star Wars associated or otherwise and I feel like Hux would back be up on that. :P

Paranoia, as swift and biting as an unexpected chilly wind, descended on Hux when he saw the number of people cluttering the runway as they exited the ship. Most of them weren’t standing around waiting, most were working but there was a small group hovering with an anticipatory air, and others stared as they went by, a few waving to them. 

There were four people and one droid in the greeting party, and despite it’s small size, the diversity or its members felt vaguely ominous, two of them being entirely different species—like he was being confronted by the galaxy made incarnate or maybe a being from each ruined planet ready to shred him barehanded for his crimes. They were a mish-mash of genders and ages as well, giving them a ragtag appearance he associated with a lack of strong leadership, of companionship through circumstance rather than careful consideration of natural authority and selected skills.

At their center, surrounded in a way which looked both protective and respectful, was a short, older woman with a severe but pleasant face who Hux just knew was General Organa without needing to be told. She reached up and patted Poe’s cheeks with both of her hands when they reached her, smiling tightly in a way that suggested she might be inclined to slap him instead.

“You’re okay,” she said.

“You know me,” he responded with a shrug like his capture, escape and subsequent survival on an uninhabited planet for nearly a month was a regular thing.

“Unfortunately,” she said as if she was confirming this, and Hux snorted, drawing attention to himself without meaning to.

She turned her eyes on him, and he resisted the urge to shrink under her gaze. She may have been small and old, but there was something distinctly frightening about her that Hux wasn’t keen on testing out right then or ever if he could help it. It reminded him strongly of Kylo’s ability to cause a similar unease in people, though hers was less dramatic and without the immediate sense of danger Kylo radiated.

“Who’s this?” she asked, sounding unfriendly enough that Hux felt his shoulders collapse despite his efforts to remain stoic. 

“A friend,” Poe said simply which Hux was grateful for until he saw Organa squint at him and then roll her eyes at Poe like she knew exactly what kind of _friend_ Hux was to him.

“Only you,” she said, sounding exasperated but also indulgent.

Great. They hadn’t been on the planet ten seconds before he was already being labeled as Poe’s—

“He defected from the First Order!” Rey chimed in loudly right next to Hux, making him flinch. She had a serious volume control issue. “Like you,” she added, speaking over Organa’s shoulder to one of the others waiting behind her.

Hux’s shoulders snapped back to square again. His indignation forgotten in place of true fear. If there was an actual First Order defector there, he was about to be in the kind of trouble Poe couldn’t protect him from.

The man—or really boy, as he couldn’t have been far out of his teen years—wasn’t someone Hux recognized. He wasn’t an officer which meant he must have been a Stormtrooper. But it didn’t matter that Hux didn’t recognize him, there was little chance that he wouldn’t know Hux regardless of what level of the First Order he’d once belonged to unless—

He had a sweet, open face that was honestly very much like Rey herself. He leaned around to see Hux more clearly, looking only curious at first, then cautious. The boy didn’t react in any obvious way, but Hux was sure he’d been spotted. He said nothing, though, just nodded a greeting, which Hux guessed may have been because of Rey’s enthusiastic introduction of him. The boy was clearly smitten with her based on the way he was looking at her like he’d suffered a head injury recently and that seemed to be enough to keep him from bursting her bubble.

It was probably not going to protect Hux after they were apart though. He felt he could trust that he’d be exposed and probably arrested before the day was through. There was no way to communicate this to Poe effectively in that moment so he just stood there, dreading what was sure to happen next and bizarrely wishing they’d never been “rescued” and brought there.

The other two people in the waiting party were fairly hard to miss for the same reason but opposite of each other: one was incredibly tall and furry and the other incredibly short and hairless with orange skin. They were both conversing with Han, seemingly entirely uninterested in the mostly silent drama going on with the rest of them.

A shrill, prolonged beeping noise came from just behind Hux then, making him jump both because of being startled and because of nearly being knocked over by the passage of a little round orange and white droid which didn’t even glance at Hux but stopped neatly right at Poe’s feet and sat there, rolling back and forth a bit and making a sound that was very close to a cat’s purring.

“Beebee-Ate!” Poe cried, dropping into a crouch so he was within the droid’s sightline, like it was an equal. His clear affection for the thing surpassed any that Hux had seen from him previously, and he felt a strong surge of dislike for it.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, no worries,” Poe said soothingly, patting himself all over to show he was uninjured, like the droid needed to be reassured of his safety. It responded with a series of little boops and bounced its curved side against his knee. He laughed and then gently straightened one of its antennae which had been leaning a bit to one side.

Hux sighed, irritated that he was standing there in actual danger of being thrown in a prison while Poe was too busy consoling a fucking _droid_ to notice that things were not going quite as planned. The droid turned its head upwards sharply just as Hux was thinking this, making him stiffen and have to remind himself that they couldn’t read minds. It kept its single little bubbled black eye lens on him while it made more beeps in a lower register which gave the impression that it was attempting to whisper.

Poe turned his head up as well and smiled at Hux and then leaned down to BB-8 and said, “I’ll tell you later,” in a low voice matching its hushed tones. It beeped at him but didn’t take its eye off Hux and continued watching him as it rolled away, its head staying fixed in that position as it went like it wanted him to know it didn’t trust him.

Hux decided he’d find some way of surreptitiously kicking it in the side next time it was around which he told himself was revenge for making him look stupid when it zoomed by him. Poe stood again, grinning and said, “He’ll come around,” like he expected Hux to make an effort to win the little robot over.

Hux would have responded to this in some way that made it clear that that was never going to happen but then he heard the name Ben mixed into the conversation Han was now having with Organa and turned his attention to that. He wanted to butt in and ask but didn’t want to draw attention to himself at all.

“—don’t know,” Han said. “He attacked her, but he didn’t kill her . . .”

“So maybe . . .” Organa said, her mouth flattening out into a grim line afterwards.

“Maybe,” Han agreed and then hugged her which made Hux recoil out of confusion. People didn’t hug high-ranking military officers in public where he was from.

Poe waited until a few moments had passed and it seemed appropriate to interrupt this exchange.

“I’m going to take him over to med,” Poe told them, gesturing to Hux. “He was injured when we were trying to escape.”

Organa’s eyes fell to the bright red slash on Hux’s arm and she swallowed with her eyes unfocused like she was reliving some memory that had been triggered by it.

“Sure,” she said, sounding distant, still looking at Hux’s arm and not either of their faces.

Poe took Hux’s other arm, up high on his bicep where it didn’t look too familiar and started to lead him away.

“I’m so sorry,” Organa said, like the words were being tugged from her by their departure.

“F-for what?” Hux stuttered, feeling his face heat up for no reason he could discover.

“For what my son did to you,” she said, waving at his arm. “I’m sure that’s not the only trouble he’s caused either if today wasn’t your first encounter.”

“Your son? You mean Ky—”

“His name is Ben,” she corrected, the apology in her voice gone, but the anger which replaced it not directed at Hux he thought. “And I’d appreciate any information you might have about him later. If you’re really from the First Order,” she finished, glancing at Poe like she knew something strange was going on and she intended to find out every detail.

“He’ll tell you what he knows,” Poe said kindly, tugging on Hux’s arm a little more insistently than before. “Let’s let Juhlee look at his arm first.”

“You could both use a bath, too,” she said and then turned her back on them without a goodbye. Hux didn’t find it offensive or take it personally. She seemed like the kind who didn’t, literally, have time for small talk and despite everything he was frustrated to find that he understood Poe’s admiration for her on some level.

When they were twenty feet away and well enough out of earshot, Poe said, “I didn’t know about that. I would have told you if I did.”

Hux actually hadn’t been thinking that it was a possibility Poe knew about Kylo’s parentage, but he realized he maybe should have assumed it. That he hadn’t been suspicious in this way when it was within his usual protocol to be so suggested a disturbing level of trust he now had for Poe that he feared would be a dangerous weakness in the next few days depending on how much he was forced to reveal about the Order.

He didn’t bring it up then, just let Poe lead him into a building, already feeling like a prisoner even with the one person he knew and who had already sworn to protect him.

* * *

After she’d looked at, poked at, and applied some kind of ointment to his arm, the drawling old nurse who had tended to him sent Hux away with Poe and an admonition to return if anything changed with his wound.

“Where are we going?” Hux asked tiredly when Poe hadn’t spoken at all since they’d left med, silently leading Hux back across the runway and towards a row of little buildings which stretched back in a messy cluster into the trees.

“To my house,” he said.

Hux scanned the approaching structures and saw that among the solid buildings there were also a number of tents which had clothing hung in front suggesting that people were living out of them.

“You said a house, right? One with actual walls?” Hux asked, not caring that he sounded absolutely and completely spoiled and probably offensive.

Poe chuckled but didn’t respond to this which made Hux’s stomach twist. Even their tiny, muddy little shelter on Dagobah had a solid roof and electricity. He morbidly dwelled on the fact that if they had a prison on the planet that it probably had walls and proper bathing facilities at least, before Poe finally stopped in front of a small, white-walled building with a plain wooden door and a single shuttered window in its front.

“Actual walls,” Poe said, smiling affectionately and indicating Hux could proceed him into the dwelling.

It was dark inside and looked disorderly and overfilled. Poe set a hand on Hux’s shoulder and reached past him to flip a switch on the wall. A few lights in the ceiling came on and Poe went around him to flip others until the front room was well lit and Hux could take in its features.

He was momentarily stunned into quiet—every sassy, snarky comment he’d been about to make completely slapped out of him by the room he was standing in. Poe crossed behind him, smiling widely, to shut the door.

It wasn’t disordered, not like he’d thought anyway, although there were things lining every wall and covering most of the surfaces. It looked . . . _inhabited_ the way rooms on the Finalizer never looked even with people living in them for years at a time. Most of the stuff looked foreign and it lacked a clear theme, like they were things Poe had collected from various places and brought home absentmindedly before fitting them in with the rest in an outlandish collection that somehow felt right, like the things had all been drawn there of their own will and clustered together comfortably in strange, agreeable society with each other.

The most interesting part of the room, though, and the thing Hux went to immediately was a small alcove filled with floor to ceiling bookshelves. The ceiling above it where it transition from the space into the wider room was dominated by a collection of mismatched lamps hanging from the ceiling, crowded together in a confusion of slightly different brightnesses and colors. It was a space Hux knew he would have hated a month previously but now wanted to climb inside and live there abandoning the rest of the house, the rest of the _planet_ , and reading for the weeks and weeks it would take to finish all of the books. He didn’t even care what they were about, there were _words_ in them. He had a discordant attraction to them which felt more like hunger than anything else at that moment.

He jumped when Poe lightly placed his hands on his hips from behind.

“I thought you’d like that part,” he said, pressing his lips to Hux’s neck for a second.

“I love it,” Hux confirmed, disliking that he sounded a bit awed by it.

“They are mine, by the way, in case you were wondering.”

“I know,” Hux said and then added, confessionally, “It’s a true I didn’t take you for a reader . . .”

“In more than one language even,” Poe said teasingly. He slid his arm around Hux’s waist and pressed him close for a second and then let go and went around him into the center of the shelves. He started pointing to them, and identifying them as sections. The fact that they were actually organized by subject made Hux feel he wanted to eat Poe even more than the books.

“Poetry,” Poe said, indicating the highest shelf and running his finger fast along their spines, then, “—fiction—”, he continued, touching on a shelf just under that, with the next three included, and, “—non-fiction, mostly history,” he finished, indicating the opposite wall at the top.

“Okay, you’re hot,” Hux blurted, getting a smile that morphed into Poe biting his lower lip for a second.

Poe reached out and placed his hand on one of the shelves directly behind him, the spines of the books there all brightly colored and suddenly standing out among the rest even before Poe had pressed his palm flat against them and said, “Erotica.”

He came back out of the room then and went past Hux who reached out weakly and touched him as he went, still staring at the books with his lips parted. Poe grabbed his hand and forced him to turn, pulling him towards the single door in the back wall.

“Later,” he said, opening it and again coaxing Hux ahead of him into the room beyond.

“Uuuh—” Hux said in dazed protest, looking back at the shelves as he was compelled through the doorway.

“What do I have to do to get you to look at _me_ like that?” Poe asked, brushing his fingertips over Hux’s mouth in a possessive way that sent a wanton shiver down the front of his body.

“Just let me _read them_ ,” Hux said like he was asking for something extremely explicit which had nothing to do with books.

“They’re yours.”

“Did I already say you were hot? Because you’re _so_ fucking hot.”

“Yeah. You said that,” Poe said, grinning. “I don’t mind you repeating it, though.”

Hux looked around and saw they were in a bedroom which was much sparser than the outer room, but still contained odd little fixtures here and there which showed the same person had influenced its decoration. The whole place _felt_ like Poe, but for the first time he considered that maybe all of it hadn’t been done by him. Another person could have lived there and done some or even all of it—given that Poe probably didn’t have a great deal of down time considering his occupation this seemed likely even.

“Did you . . . do all of this yourself . . .?” he asked, waving around at everything in what he hoped looked like a casual manner.

“Most of it,” Poe said, and then let Hux squirm for a few long seconds before adding, “Some it was here when I moved in.”

Hux tried to exhale in a way that didn’t reveal he’d been holding his breath.

“No one else has lived here with me if that’s what you’re after,” Poe said, making it forgiving and not at all mocking Hux’s poorly hidden concern that he was stepping into a place Poe had already shared with someone else. “I thought you’d be more anxious to get rid of these clothes honestly,” he said, tugging at the mud-caked hem of Hux’s shirt.

Hux looked down at himself and saw his own state of dirtiness new, juxtaposed grotesquely against the neatness of the room and felt a bit ill. He put his hands up palms out like he hoped his clothing would just vanish rather than him having to touch them again to remove them.

Poe stepped forward and helped him out of the shirt, positioning him like a doll to make it easier. Hux closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to witness how much dirt was probably caked on his skin as well, but opened them again with a little gasp when Poe unzipped the bottom of his suit and pushed it down his hips, letting his fingertips trail on Hux’s skin as he did it.

“There’s a shower back there,” Poe said, turning him by the shoulders. “Do you want to be alone?” His hands slid down Hux’s arms in a soft way which felt more comforting than like a come on.

“No. You don’t have to wait. It’s your house.”

“It’s yours too as long as you’d like,” Poe countered easily. “And you don’t have to stay here either if you don’t feel comfortable for whatever reason. I’m not expecting anything. We didn’t agree to anything specific when we talked about you coming back he—”

Hux turned back, careful not to trip on the clothing pooled at his feet and bent to kiss him, wondering if it looked stupid with Poe still fully dressed and him naked and filthy, but he found he didn’t care as much as he once might have. Poe smiled, looking vaguely sleepy when Hux released them.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” he said. “The way you kiss, I swear . . . if you don’t want to live with me, you’re welcome to keep the house, and I’ll move somewhere else as long as you’re willing to do that occasionally for rent.”

“I think that would technically make me a prostitute.”

“Better stay then. Wouldn’t want to see that happen to you . . .” Poe said, nudging Hux back towards the bathroom again.

It was just as neat, strange and charming as the rest of the house, but Hux didn’t pause to notice any of it in great detail.

Once Poe had shed his clothes and stepped into the shower with him, moving Hux aside but not out of the water with a firm, familiar hand, Hux had a sudden moment of weirdness realizing he’d never shared a shower with anyone in this way before. There were communal showers at the academy, of course, but bathing as fast as possible, as far away as possible from others, while avoiding looking at anyone or anything around as much as you could was very far from being the same thing as standing close to someone, accommodating them in your space, their skin brushing yours, the freedom to touch them if you wanted knowing that the contact would be welcomed.

He turned towards the wall while he was thinking this, feeling ludicrously emotional and, for a few horrible seconds, like he might begin crying hard, those gross, ugly kinds of sobs already blossoming in his chest, pressing like a physical thing against the inside of his sternum. He fought to keep his shoulders still, trying to appear like he was just spacing off thinking, but it wasn’t very effective. If Poe hadn’t touched him just then he might have managed it after another minute of concentrating, but the feeling of a hand settling almost reverently against his back tore that control away. He put his head against the cold tile of the wall and tried not to be too obvious about it at least.

Poe didn’t remove his hand or try to make more contact, he just waited.

“It’s a lot,” Poe said after, when Hux had managed to contain most of what was happening.

Hux’s legs felt weak, and he turned his back to the wall and carefully slid down it to sit on the floor of the shower which, luckily, wasn’t slimy. It wasn’t a large space even standing so it was sort of a mess when Poe joined him there without comment, moving Hux’s limbs around like he had while undressing him until they were situated as comfortably as they could have been like that.

“I’ll send you away right now if you want to go,” Poe said cautiously, with his hands folded across his own chest, only touching Hux where he had to for them to both fit. “I don’t know what she’s going to ask you about the Order or if she’s only interested in knowing about her son. I’d understand if you don’t want to face that . . .”

“She’d want to know what you were hiding if you did that.”

“That would be my problem. I didn’t mean for you to be punished when you got here. I told you that. This didn’t happen quite the way we planned though.”

“I don’t see how it could have been different,” Hux said miserably. “I think we were maybe lying to ourselves thinking that. She knew right away something was up. She’s too much like Kylo . . . of course, we didn’t know that then.”

“I should have, though. Not about Kylo. But she is pretty sharp.”

“She’s terrifying is what she is.”

“Look at you, sharing your feelings like a normal person,” Poe said amusedly.

“It’s a fact not a feeling.”

Poe shrugged. “I’ve known her a long time. She’s not cruel, just fierce. She’s seen a lot of things in her time. Lost a lot of people.”

Hux was thinking about all of the people now lost to him and had to swallow a new sensation of sickness knowing it wasn’t at all the same thing as the people she’d lost. Not at all the same as those people who were on the planets obliterated by the weapon he’d created. He couldn’t really feel as much sympathy over that, over those people because they weren’t real, they didn’t have faces or voices in his mind. Leia Organa had a face now, though, one that he could picture again clearly and see a trace of her son in it. Just a suggestion of Kylo around her eyes and the shape of her chin. She’d been here, mourning her son this whole time, while actively fighting to bring down the organization which housed him, knowing every time she sent out Poe and his comrades in their ships that one of them might come back with her son’s blood on their hands, but doing it anyway.

He thought about what Poe had said about them needing things to fight for so there would be something left afterwards, people to care for, children to raise, cities to build, books to read—for her, though, winning would mean destroying the most vital part of that other life for herself on behalf of those she commanded so that after they, at least, would have something to live for.

 

* * *

Hux stayed in the steamy, warm room alone for a few minutes after getting out of the shower, looking at his own face in the watery mirror. He pushed his hair into a shape which resembled his old hairstyle with his fingers. It wasn’t quite as tidy as he preferred it, being slightly overgrown, and his face, floating pale underneath it, was altered even more dramatically, partly by having lost weight and partly something else that—

“Whoa,” Poe said from the doorway. “I’d almost forgotten that.”

“What?” Hux asked, even though he knew.

“The way you looked before. Your hair like that.”

“It looks awful.”

Poe cocked his head and examined Hux for a few moments.

“It could grow on me,” he said. “Makes you look . . . General-y.”

“Generally what?”

“I mean ‘like a general.’”

“Oh.” Hux reached up getting ready to pull his bangs down onto his forehead, but Poe stopped him.

“You don’t have to do that. I know who you are, and it doesn’t change anything for me.” He pushed the disrupted hair back into place and continued looking Hux over that way. “It could _really_ grow on me if you felt like ordering me around a little bit like that . . .”

“Ordering you around how?”

“You’re the general,” Poe said, like a challenge for Hux to go as far as he liked with that idea.

Hux licked his lips, a large, overlapping jumble of things he could imagine ordering Poe to do piling up in his mind and making it hard to tug out just one and voice it. The main problem was that he was feeling deflated and not particularly sexual at that exact moment.

“Not now,” Poe said, observing Hux’s confused lack of response. “Beebee just came with a message from Organa. She wants to talk with you.”

“You mean interrogate me.”

Poe made a face but didn’t negate this. “It was worded like a dinner invitation by him, but . . . yeah, he’s just too nice to say it the way she probably did.”

“Does he live here with you? Or stay here, I mean?” Hux asked and then amended, not knowing if “live” was a word that applied to droids. It probably did for Poe based on the way he’d treated it earlier.

“He’s usually with me most of the time. All the time when I fly, but he likes to talk so, yeah, I guess you could say he lives here, too. I forgot to mention my astromech boyfriend when I said no one else lived with me, sorry,” he said, reaching out and pinching Hux’s side playfully. 

“I’m not jealous of your stupid robot,” Hux said irritably, slapping Poe’s hand away.

“Sure.”

“It seems pretty annoying is all. Does it stay here even while you’re asleep?”

“You worried about what he’s going to see while we’re ‘sleeping’?” Poe asked, grinning.

“Don’t be an ass. Not having droids watching you while you fuck is probably something most people prefer about where they live.”

“You’re right. He’s a bit of a gossip anyway. Better keep him out,” Poe said, still smiling, obviously enjoying Hux’s open discomfort. 

“You have actual conversations with it?”

“All the time.”

“About what?”

“Everything. He’s funny. You’ll see.”

“Can’t wait,” Hux said flatly, and Poe laughed.

“Here,” he said, holding out clean, folded clothing which Hux took and then paused after unfolding the top.

“These are pretty small . . .” he said, eyeing Poe to indicate he didn’t believe they were his.

“They aren’t mine,” he confirmed.

“Then who did they belong to?”

“No one you need to feel threatened by.”

“I’m not _threatened_ —”

“Beebee said Rey sent them.”

“Are they hers?” He asked, sincerely unsure what the differences were between men’s and women’s clothing there as they looked pretty generic and he’d been given pants and a light blue shirt with no markings.

“They’re probably Finn’s.”

“Who’s Finn?”

“He’s that ex-stormtrooper you met earlier.”

“The one who’s in love with her,” Hux said without thinking about it first.

“Noticed that, did you? That’s funny of you.”

“It is not ‘funny of me’ to be observant.”

“Trust me. About this, it is. And yeah, him. Unless there was more than one ex-stormtrooper you met earlier.”

“There’s no such thing as an ex-stormtrooper,” Hux said, pulling the shirt over his head and checking the fit in the mirror. It was baggy and made him look like an invalid.

“What does that mean?” Poe asked, squinting in a concerned way.

Hux shrugged and moved onto the pants. “Ask him and I’ll bet he’d tell you the same thing.”

“Are you saying he’s dangerous?”

“How would I know? I met him for two seconds. Probably not, though. Especially not if he has a connection to the girl. I doubt he’d cause trouble with her around to impress. I’m guessing that’s why he didn’t reveal who I was to Organa when we met earlier.”

Poe had leaned on the counter, propping his head in his hand while Hux talked. He made a humming sound when Hux finished what he was saying.

“What?” Hux asked.

“You’re very good at reading people.”

“It’s a necessary skill for someone in my position,” Hux said simply, unsure if this was a compliment or something about him that Poe found disconcerting. “When is she expecting us?” he asked, happy to take the conversation away from himself even if it would start back up again and likely be more invasive once they’d met up with her.

“Soon as we can. I’m ready.”

Hux looked him up and down and then back at himself in the mirror.

“We should probably wait until at least one of us has dry hair first . . .”

Poe snorted. “If that makes you feel better, but she’s just as good as you at reading people. She already knows about us.”

“Well, there’s no need to rub it in people’s faces,” Hux said forcefully. “And how do you know she knows about us?”

“Beebee.”

“Are you serious?”

“I told you he’s a gossip.”

“I believe you. I wasn’t even in here for that long, though. Did he just blurt all of that the second he rolled in the door? Is he still here?” Hux leaned out to look around Poe into the bedroom.

“He’s outside. I know you well enough to know you would have killed me if I’d let him in here while you were naked.”

“Good thing since he’d probably be outside showing everyone who passes a projection of it right now.”

“Nah, he’s not malicious. Unless you’re just flattering yourself.”

“We can go whenever,” Hux said shortly, trying to brush past Poe who caught him around the waist and pulled him back, trapping him against the counter.

“You scared?” he asked, his hands gentle on Hux’s back.

“Not exactly. Nervous, I guess,” Hux confessed, unable to deny the sick swell of anxiety that filled his stomach when he started considering all of the things she could ask.

“Well, you _look_ cute anyway,” Poe said, tugging at the hem of the too large shirt. “Blue is a good color on you.”

“Somehow I doubt she’s going to be impressed by that.”

“Yeah, but it’s fun for _me_. You’re even cuter when you’re flustered.”

“You’re making it wors—”

“Look, Organa’s reasonable, and she trusts me,” Poe said, more serious. “I don’t know if that guarantees that nothing unpleasant will result from talking to her tonight, but I think the long term consequences won’t be so bad. She understands your job better than anyone else around here. Just be respectful and everything will be fine.”

“Respectful.”

“I don’t mean salute her. Just be polite.”

“I have impeccable manners, thank you.”

“Really?” Poe said, raising one eyebrow in an amused expression of disbelief.

“Shut up.”

“Right. Sorry I doubted you, you’re a real peach.”

“If I have _a reason_ to be polite, I will be.”

“Okay, but just keep in mind that she’s not the one who will be trying to get you drunk and take your clothes off later so maybe you could try being a little nicer to me as well . . .” Poe said, kissing the side of Hux’s neck a little _too_ nicely for that moment if they wanted to leave very soon.

“Can we go?” Hux asked, determined to remain irritated, feeling he might need the scruffiness of it to prop him up during his meeting with Organa. He couldn’t go in there _feeling_ or _looking_ moony over Poe.

“Yup.”

“And Poe?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t tolerate that kind of insolence from the people under my command. If you want to play Dirty General Hux with me, your first order is to keep your tongue in check when speaking to me.”

“Yes, Sir,” Poe said without a trace of mockery, a dreamy, suggestive smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, poor Hux when he finds out Poe has another adorable orange and white baby he loves more than anything in the universe. <3
> 
> I started seriously fucking with the pre-TFA canon timeline here as Poe hasn't known Leia personally or worked for the Resistance for as long as I'm suggesting. Eh.


	9. Irregular Spaces

She did have food waiting for them and was also alone when they arrived at her house where BB-8 had led them and which Poe whispered was unorthodox. He said he’d never been to where she lived before. 

Hux didn’t see this as a good sign, but he could see that Poe did and chose not to spoil it. Organa was smart. She wasn’t trying to be friendly by inviting Hux directly to her private residence, she was establishing dominance by reminding him that not only was this her base of command, it was where she lived—this was personal to her and she wanted him to know it. The feeling that she must already know exactly who he was by the time she let them inside was heavy in the air.

She didn’t mention it right away. She didn’t bring up Kylo either. But since, like Hux had suspected previously, she didn’t seem prone to small talk, their meal was mostly silent and very uncomfortable.

As soon as Hux had set his fork down and removed his hand from it she set hers own down after barely touching her food and said, “All right, who the fuck are you really?”

Hux cleared his throat, regretting it as it made him seem weak and nervous.

“Can I assume you’ve already spoken with Finn about me?” he asked.

“You’d be right to assume that. He wouldn’t tell me anything, though. He just said to ask you. I didn’t want to press him, seems fragile . . .” she said with an accusatory note which told Hux he needed to tread lightly.

“I was an officer . . .”

“What rank?”

He glanced at Poe who nodded, which Hux took as a sign he should be honest. While she didn’t seem to be very receptive or welcoming that evening, Poe knew her better and Hux had to trust that he wouldn’t put them in peril if that were a possibility.

“General. I was in command of the Finalizer.”

“ _Hux,_ ” she said, harsh and surprised, turning her head to stare at Poe like Hux had done, like he was a chessboard they were consulting before moving their pieces around. Poe put his hands up in an apologetic gesture like he couldn’t control who he happened to accidentally seduce, and she glared at him reproachfully before turning her attention and barely concealed impatience with both of them back to Hux.

“And you just decided to walk away from all of that one day for no reason?” she questioned, her face set into an expression of deep mistrust.

“Not exactly.”

“Then what _exactly_ did happen?”

“Poe was a prisoner on my ship. Brought there by . . . Ben,” Hux said after deciding to use the name she’d insisted on earlier rather than Kylo or “your son” as that last felt cruel—reminding someone that their son was the type to kidnap and torture people wasn’t _polite_.

“Why?” she asked.

“He was looking for a map of some kind.”

She inhaled sharply. “Did he see it?” she asked, directing this question to Poe.

“Not from me, because I hadn’t either. Lor didn’t show it to me, luckily, just gave me the chip. Which I left with Beebee when Kyl—uh, Ben took me. He found out what I’d done with it, but since Beebee’s here I assumed . . . did he still have the map when he got here? How _did he_ get here anyway?”

“He showed up with Rey and Finn. And Han. A few days after the raid on Jakku,” she said, and Hux caught a hint of something uneven in her voice when she said Han’s name. “He still had the map, but it’s only a piece of it.”

“That’s all Lor gave me,” Poe said sounding regretful. “Was it damaged?”

“No. Just incomplete. He must have split it up on purpose,” she said bitterly.

“This is the map leading to Luke Skywalker?” Hux asked tentatively.

“Yeah. Know anything about it?”

“Just that Ben was very intent on getting his hands on it.”

She frowned lopsidedly, staring at the table in an unfocused way like she had at Hux’s arm on the runway earlier.

“I don’t know why, though,” Hux offered though it wasn’t offering anything useful. “I guess I can assume you’re also looking for him?”

“Your ‘assumptions’ are pretty dead on tonight,” she said. “Why don’t you just stop being coy about it and say what you mean if you have something to say.”

“Why are you looking him?” Hux asked immediately, making and keeping eye contact with her.

“Because he’s been missing for ten years.”

“Sounds like he doesn’t want to found,” he observed pointedly.

“Too bad for him. We need him here.”

“Your male family members seem to favor running away from their problems rather than facing them, so I hope you don’t need him for something important,” Hux said, choosing candor, and trying to keep his tone merely informational and not cold.

This earned him a small, sarcastic laugh from her which he took as a victory and a prize for not bullshitting her. “Nothing important, no,” she said. “Just the fate of the entire galaxy.”

“How so?”

“You asking that is too ironic to waste my time explaining unless you’ve for some stupid reason I can’t fathom lied to me about who you are.”

“That’s fair, I guess. From your perspective the First Order seems like a threat to the galaxy.”

“From most people’s, General, and I’ll warn you now not to be too flippant about that here after what happened with the Hosnian system. You’re on neutral ground for now, but don’t push me.”

“Noted.”

“I still need to know how you ended up here with him,” she said, nodding to Poe like she was too disgusted with him to say his name at the moment. "I mean, I know he's pretty," she went on. "But he ain't _that_ pretty. So if you're trying to tell me you gave up commanding the most powerful army in the galaxy for him, well, I'm sorry, but I don't believe you."

Hux allowed an eyebrow raise at this, the leader of the Resistance, complimenting the strength of his former army. He didn't respond right away, he'd been distracted by Poe's laugh after Organa's given and then immediately reduced compliment. He shook his head after a few moments of silence in which they both watched him.

"I don't blame you for not believing it," Hux said. "It makes no sense. But I don't have another explanation to give to you, unfortunately. Trust me, I wish I did." He gave Poe a look that he felt wasn’t far off from the one he’d just gotten from Organa.

Poe laughed again, a bright, cheerful laugh that made Hux feel warm and included. Organa made a face at Poe that clearly conveyed she really didn't understand what Poe saw in him.

"You think we can honesty trust him?" She asked, and it sounded like what she was really asking was why Poe had chosen to fall for someone like Hux in the first place.

"Yeah, I think so."

"I'm here now," Hux said simply.

"Also, I think he still hates me just a little bit over a few minor things I did before,” Poe said in a fake whisper to Organa. “You have to take into account his willingness to help despite that.”

Hux scoffed but there was no malice in it. "By 'minor things' he means 'kidnapping and—'"

Organa put her hands up palm out to stop Hux talking. "Save the foreplay for when I'm not here, Boys. We have a few other ‘minor' things to discuss."

"Such as?" Hux asked.

"Such as what blew up those planets."

"It's a weapon. A pretty big one," Poe informed.

"Yeah, I kind of figured that part out for myself," Organa said in a flat, borderline rude way that Hux appreciated especially when she added, "His looks are going to fade eventually, you know . . ." to Hux.

“If they’ve discovered that your base is here, none of us is going to live long enough for that to matter,” Hux said, hoping it didn’t fall under “flippancy” in her mind as it was a legitimate warning. The Order could be on their way here with the base already recharged for all he knew.

“You want sanctuary here until that happens or we win the war?” she asked.

“Yes, I want sanctuary,” Hux said, keeping his eyes on her and not letting them go to Poe as he knew he’d lose his composure if he did. If she was really offering to let him hide among them, it would mean he could stay there with Poe and not have to think any more about the awful possibility of being forced out or having to run with or without him.

“Tell me everything you know about their weapon and you’ve got it.”

“It’s not _their_ weapon, it’s _mine_ ,” he said before considering that taking credit for a device she clearly wasn’t very amused by may not have been the best idea.

“Good for you,” she said, utterly unimpressed by his declared ownership of Starkiller. “I want to blow it up. Can you help me do that?”

Hux thought for a moment about how long he’d worked on that thing, of falling asleep on top of blueprints, of walking its bare girders while it was still being constructed and then about having to watch its powers used from far away when it was finally ready. They’d stolen his work, and if he couldn’t convince his new tentative allies to just take it over based on how much they all seemed to find it monstrous, he would take it from the Order another way.

“Yeah, General, I can do that,” he said with an overly satisfied smile he couldn’t stop from climbing his face.

Organa raised her eyebrows and then turned to Poe and said, “He’d better be useful, because he’s a little creepy to be honest.”

She had asked about Kylo finally well after they’d finished eating and Hux was wondering if she was going to say anything at all. When she did, Hux suggested that they talk alone, not wanting to discuss Kylo in front of Poe. She agreed to this and Poe waited outside while they spoke. When Hux rejoined him, Poe was leaning against the front of the house, chatting with his droid. He looked relaxed and happy with how things had gone.

Organa had seen Hux to the door. She shook his hand formally and then hugged Poe very briefly.

“Thank you,” she said, gripping Poe’s shoulders for a moment after pulling away.

“For what?” Poe asked.

“Getting the map. And bringing him here,” she said. “If he turns out to give us the information we need then you may have saved us all.”

“I would have figured out how to destroy it anyway,” Poe said confidently.

Organa tilted her head and then looked at Hux. “He’s like this all the time, you know,” she said.

“Yes, I’m familiar with his antics.”

She smiled, a warm genuine smile that made her look younger and a little nostalgic. Then she shrugged and said, “I’m in no place to judge you, I guess. I married Han fucking Solo.”

“Oh.” That explained the hugging and the exchange Hux had heard about Kylo on the runway. It’s meaning snapped into place: they were hoping he was not too far gone and they had hope of reclaiming him still. “So Han’s—”

“Ben’s father,” she confirmed.

“It’s a real family affair over here then.”

“It always is . . .” she said, reminding Hux of who her father had been.

* * *

They made their way back to Poe’s house, BB-8 rolling near Poe’s feet like a strange puppy, remaining silent though to Hux’s relief.

“What did she ask you about Kylo?” Poe asked.

“Things a mother wants to know,” Hux said, and added, after a sideways glance, “Things it wouldn’t have been proper for me to share with you.”

“Not gonna kiss and tell, huh?”

“I didn’t tell her any of that.”

“Okay,” Poe said, not pressing for more information. He slid his arm around Hux’s waist but let go again quickly after a light squeeze. Hux put space between them as walked through the semi-dark avenues back to Poe’s house, hoping Poe wouldn’t take it to be more negative than it was. They passed a few people on the way, one of which greeted Poe and looked over Hux appraisingly before going by without inquiring. Hux wasn’t sure if Organa would reveal who he was to her troops or if he’d even have any contact with any of them.

Poe crouched down to talk to BB-8 outside of the doorway. “Hey, buddy, we’re going to have something pretty important to do soon. Go run a diagnostic on the ship and make sure everything’s running right, okay?”

It responded with another series of those beeps and bloops it communicated with and which Hux couldn’t fathom how anyone understood and rolled away, whistling to itself.

“Do you need anything?” Poe asked, standing again. “There’s a shop over there. Probably not anything fancy like what you’re used to, but—”

“Cigarettes,” Hux said, cutting him off.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“Not always.”

“Do you want to go with me or stay here?”

“I’ll go. Only, could you maybe not touch me while we’re in public for now?” Hux asked, staring at the dirt of the street and not at Poe as he spoke.

“Just for now or always?” Poe asked quietly.

“Everyone knows you here . . . they stare.”

“They’ll stare anyway. You stick out a bit,” Poe said, glancing over Hux to address his height, paleness and flaming hair.

“It’s different.”

Poe put his hands out as if to say he’d keep them to himself and led them behind the next row of tents and houses into a little shop with a dingy exterior and glaring yellow lighting inside.

It wasn’t, as Poe had said, fancy like what Hux was used to, but he didn’t care. There were things in jars and boxes, properly sealed and new. It was better than getting to take a shower finally in some ways. It made him feel like he had just then escaped Dagobah—to have the option of adding things to his possessions which he didn’t have to scavenge or cobble together from whatever was around.

A woman in her twenties with dark hair approached them down an aisle at one point and gave Poe a hug which, while enthusiastic, also seemed like the kind of hug one man would give to another after a sports match.

Poe introduced her as Jessika, a member of his squadron, explaining her general demeanor towards him. She left them quickly, but based on the hug she looked like she was about to give to Hux as well—which he avoided by angling himself between Poe and a shelf—she had pegged them as being involved as well.

“Do you have a reputation here as a . . . someone who dates a lot of people?” Hux asked after she’d departed and they were headed back to pay the owner.

“No. Why?”

“Just no one seems surprised by this—” Hux made a back and forth gesture between them “—and they’re all giving me looks like they _know_ as soon as we meet them.”

“Probably because I’m not known for doing this actually . . .”

“Really?” Hux asked, sounding skeptical.

“Should I be flattered or insulted here?”

“Flattered, I guess. It just seems like you wouldn’t have had any trouble getting whoever you wanted . . .” Hux said, regretting the conversation immensely now as it made him seem jealous and insecure.

Poe grinned at him. “But why would I go with someone who _already_ likes me when I can kidnap someone who thinks I’m scum and slowly annoy them into loving me?”

“I sincerely don’t know.”

They paused this conversation until they’d gotten back outside where Poe sighed and said, “I’m not actually very good at this sort of thing, despite your insinuations that I must be bedding everyone in sight. Also there’s a war on and having an attachment like that to someone here could be problematic in a situation where everyone needs to be treated like a soldier. It was difficult for my parents, and I never wanted to risk that. I accused you once of having nothing but your ideals to comfort you—which was a shitty thing to say, I know I already apologized for it—but what I didn’t say then is that I’m no different. I made my job the most important thing. I might have claimed before that it was necessity, that I did it because I was needed . . . but that’s not entirely true. It’s hard enough to lose friends, and I already lost my parents . . .”

“Then it was wise of you,” Hux said. He’d have been earnestly driven to validate the choices Poe had made for reasons beyond them ensuring Poe stayed single until they’d met.

“Only you would say that,” Poe said, with a sad kind of affection Hux understood in profound way though he’d only experienced it for things before, never people.

“So,” Hux said, eyeing Poe in a searching way. “Your stirring speech after Starkiller’s attack about having ‘things to live for’ after the war was all crap then was it?”

“No,” Poe said. “That was just the first time it was true for me.” Then, to Hux’s great relief, Poe shook off this uncharacteristic gloom like an itchy blanket and smiled. “Also that thing I said back there about starting with someone who doesn’t even really like me at first may be a bit truer than I meant when I said it. It feels . . . more real with you, because you didn’t like me right away.”

“I found you attractive right away,” Hux admitted, maybe trying to deflect that Poe was applying something heavier than he felt comfortable with to their relationship.

“But that wasn’t enough for you to do anything about it.”

“I never would have done anything about it if you hadn’t,” Hux said, glad it was much darker because he could hide his embarrassment in it by turning his face down.

“Yeah, I guessed that based on the fact that you went well out of your way to avoid acknowledging all of my very obvious flirting.”

“That was you flirting? You’re right, you’re not very good at this . . .”

“You liked it.”

“Sometimes.”

Poe held out his hand, letting it hover in the air between them. “You said they’re all figuring it out anyway . . “ he coaxed.

And Hux decided since it was darker now and they were only a block away from being inside that it was maybe not the worst thing to bend his rule that time. He placed his hand in Poe’s, but still kept distance between them as they walked back.

Poe removed the things from Hux’s hands and dropped them unceremoniously into a chair and then pulled him into the bedroom, pushing him into the wall just inside the door and holding him there with his hands gripping Hux’s hips tightly.

“Any orders for me, General?” he whispered in a voice that sounded somehow milky—smooth and liquid.

“Strip,” Hux said, putting his hand in the middle of Poe’s chest and pushing him back a few feet so he could stand up straighter, his shoulders squared and his hands clasped together behind his back in an official pose he’d once used on his ship when giving out commands on the bridge.

Poe obeyed wordlessly, keeping his eyes forward, locked on Hux’s face the whole time. He just waited after that, back straight and feet planted slightly apart like he was dressed in a uniform, awaiting an order he’d follow just as as exactly as he had the first one.

Hux walked around him slowly like he was looking for something to correct. He tapped the backs of his fingers under Poe’s chin, raising it slightly and managed to not react to the low, encouraging sound Poe made when he did it.

He stopped behind Poe’s back and paused there for several seconds, wanting to see if Poe would break posture and try to spoil the game by doing something he hadn’t been told to do. He didn’t. Hux reached for his elbows and used them to push Poe’s arms forward, sliding his fingers along them so they were folded across his stomach.

“Grab both of your wrists with your opposite hand and don’t let go,” he said into the hollow behind Poe’s ear, his mouth close to ensure his breath heated Poe’s skin.

Poe did and stayed that way even when Hux walked back around him, trailing his fingers over Poe’s shoulder and collarbone, wrapping his fingers around his throat for a few seconds just to see what he’d do. Poe blinked slowly, but didn’t move or speak otherwise.

Hux bent and tugged the belt from Poe’s discarded pants free of its loops. He wound the end of it around one of his own hands, checking Poe’s face for a reaction. He looked nervous, but also anticipatory. That was enough for Hux and he let the end loose again and looped it around Poe’s wrists instead, cinching it tightly there but leaving his fingers free.

“I want to see marks here when I’m done with you,” he said, running his fingertips under Poe’s on the soft skin of his forearms to indicate the place he wanted them to be.

“Yes, Sir,” Poe said crisply. “Anything else?”

“On the bed. Flat on your back.”

Poe followed this direction exactly, turning his head once he was in position so he could keep Hux in his field of vision. Hux observed him for a moment and then  instructed him to put his arms up as well which Poe did, his bound wrists resting against the top of his head making him look exposed, almost sacrificial. Hux liked the effect, though not because he had any intention of harming Poe. The trusting, ready compliance in Poe putting himself in such a vulnerable position willingly was heady.

Hux didn’t speak again until after he’d kicked off his shoes and stepped onto the bed, standing over Poe, still fully dressed otherwise with his feet planted on either side of Poe’s hips.

He didn’t say anything then either until Poe, seemingly unable to help himself, asked what to do next.

“Don’t be such a greedy slut for one thing. I’ll get to you when I’m ready,” Hux said, reaching into his pocket for the cigarettes they’d bought, suppressing a smile at the way Poe closed his eyes and exhaled heavily through parted lips in response to the verbal abuse.

He stayed there awhile, leisurely smoking and examining Poe’s body the way he’d once studied Starkiller’s blueprints—with a calculating expression, making notes in his head of details he’d not taken the time to truly appreciate the previous times they’d been together. With his arms like they were, the outline of his ribcage stood out sharply, the ladder of his ribs countable if Hux had wanted to number them. There was a tattoo Hux didn’t know how he’d overlooked before on the underside of Poe’s left bicep—some symbol he didn’t recognize. And—

“What’s this?” he asked, running the edge of his foot lightly up Poe’s side from the dip of his waist almost to his armpit.

There were a number of thin white scars there, stacked unevenly, like a messy pile of papers, spanning the entire length Hux had indicated with his touch. Poe swallowed, hesitation stilling his features into a wary expression Hux hated seeing on him.

“An old habit,” Poe said, his eyes on Hux’s face, but distance in the gaze, making Hux feel Poe wasn’t really seeing him.

Hux didn’t question him further, an uncomfortably strong feeling of worry settling on his shoulders like a massive creature had crept up behind him and decided to crawl up and perch there, not caring if its weight was too much for his thin frame.

“You don’t have to do that other thing I told you to do . . .” Hux said tightly, tapping his fingers on his own arm to illustrate it. He would never have suggested it if he’d known of those scars before, not with Poe.

“I want to,” Poe said, his vision snapping back into focus, his fingers tensed, making the nails dent his skin a bit. Hux felt a sick mixture of arousal and guilt watching it. “It’s okay,” Poe added quickly. “I don’t do that anymore, and this is different. I promise.”

Hux still felt he should make Poe stop anyway, but Poe’s conspicuous enjoyment of it made it impossible for him to command otherwise—Poe’s eyes were unfocused again, but in a wholly different way, and he shifted his hips inside of the cage of Hux’s ankles in a rolling, arching motion he might have used if Hux was encasing him already.

Finally having a proper lubricant made Hux want to draw it out as long as he could, but he was too exhausted to be particularly creative that night and finally ended up just riding him, forcing Poe to edge his climax three times before allowing him to finish, which Poe confessed afterwards made him black out for several seconds when he came.

Hux was mildly disgusted by the idea of touching himself to the point of completion in front of someone else but with Poe’s hands out of reach he didn’t have much of a choice about it. He looked away as he finished, finding the sight of his come pooling onto Poe’s stomach embarrassing—jerking himself off was linked to a time before anyone else had ever been interested in doing it for him, and he imagined himself looking weak and grotesque during it.

Poe, of course, didn’t appear to share any of those ideas, and was watching him with a sickeningly worshipful face when Hux went to undo his restraint afterwards.

“You look so beautiful like that,” Poe said, pulling Hux down next to him as soon as his hands were freed.

“Like what?”

“Riding me. Coming for me.”

Hux huffed. “Nobody looks good doing that. It’s—”

“You do. You’re perfect,” Poe said, not letting him argue, kissing him until he stopped trying to speak.

Hux thought sleep would come easy that night, but it wouldn’t. He laid awake, watching Poe sleeping after he was absolutely certain he was and not just faking like he had that one morning Hux had woken up clinging to him like a life raft. He ran his fingers over the light pink scratches on Poe’s arms where he’d dug his fingernails into them like Hux had directed. To Hux they seemed a silent token of Poe’s commitment to their relationship, whatever it was at that point. He’d hurt himself for Hux if it was required, in a larger sense than just this one, Hux was certain of that after Poe’s dangerous confrontation of Kylo. It scared him a bit thinking this as he knew the person he’d been before may have abused this option, and he didn’t know if he was different enough to not do it then.

He studied the way Poe's mouth was different in sleep, the shape altered ever so slightly without the steady pressure of conscious reactions which shaped it when Poe was awake. He discovered that there was a small, curved space on one side of his upper lip where it didn't connect fully to his lower lip with his mouth relaxed the way it was. That this only happened on one side and not both was striking in way Hux found indescribably alluring. He usually only liked things which were symmetrical, orderly, the same on all sides—but now there was this anomaly, this one-sided aberration which was perfect not in spite of but because of its lack of continuity, and it was this tiny detail which made him realize that Poe was correct in what he’d said after they’d watched the Hosnian system shatter into space dust: Hux loved him. Maybe Poe had only been trying to tease him before, maybe it was just a game or arrogance or a need to feel desired on Poe's part, but it was deeply and irreversibly true. It felt like having a thousand tiny needles imbedded in his body, stabbed deep into his chest, lodged painfully between his ribs so they pricked him with every breath, haloing his heart so they sang out sweetly with every beat in an ever-repeating reminder that he loved Poe Dameron more than he'd ever loved anything and he would never be free of it again. No technology existed which had the power to remove those sharp little torture devices and Hux knew that even if there were it would cause an intricate maze of internal bleeding so severe that it would kill him.

He leaned forward, holding his breath to keep from waking Poe and lightly pressed a kiss to that irregular space between his upper lip and lower lip. He thought it might feel stupid, but it didn't. It felt like the only honest thing in the universe, and he knew that if Poe disappeared someday, that, like Kylo had turned out to have done for him, Hux would never stop searching for him. He'd wander every star system in every direction until Poe was found, even if it meant Poe might reject him after if he’d left of his own accord, Hux would still do it just to witness that perfect, soft gap in his lips only one more time before he died.

But more than that, he was as sure as could be that he wouldn’t use Poe’s dedication to hurt him and this knowledge dulled the pressure of those uncountable pains in his chest just a little bit, just enough to make him believe that everything would be okay, just like Poe had said.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, I have a semi-dark head canon involving Poe being a teenage self-injurer. Poe doesn’t strike me as a particularly stable person as an adult. He’s way too excited about and willing to do incredibly dangerous things and my explanation for that is as follows: losing his mom so young would have been difficult and I’m guessing (based on the comics and how much she was portrayed like him) that he would have felt isolated growing up, having no one around who was very much like him. Kes was a bad ass, too, no doubt, but not in the same way. Shara taught Poe to fly, and that connection is strong every time he gets into a plane. She's with him in that sense when he's flying, and he feels like it protects him somehow. 
> 
> So, following that, I feel like despite his gregariousness that he doesn’t form close emotional relationships with other people any more than Hux does. He’s friendly with everyone, but doesn’t connect, using his cheerfulness and rebel attitude as a shield. I feel like he would have used self-injury to deal with emotional problems he couldn’t express in any other way and stopped only after he became a pilot, relying on the adrenaline rush of flying into dangerous situations to help him regulate his fucked up feelings. Also his mom died while flying, so if he cares about his team members too much, he’ll have to relive that every time one of them is lost on a mission and he simply can’t do it. So he takes the craziest missions, chasing down that high so he always goes home too exhausted to dwell on anything weighty. He likes people, but he doesn’t let himself be too attached to anyone. 
> 
> Except BB, of course. <3
> 
> And now Hux.
> 
> Anyway. Part of my personal Poe file. I’m very into secretly tragic Poe.


	10. Starkiller

Over the next few days Hux thought he probably he spent more time with Leia than he did with Poe—enough that he’d started thinking of her by her first name in his head but was not yet brave enough to use it out loud to her. He felt a curious connection to her he didn’t feel for anyone else he’d met since arriving, maybe as strong as with Poe on some level, though very different in nature. Leia was practical and focused on getting to the right information as quickly as possible. She had the mind of an expert military commander, and the shorthand this allowed them to use with each other was soothing. 

She seemed impressed by him as well but wasn’t obsequious in her acknowledgement of his skill in rebuilding a multi-dimensional model of Starkiller Base in their databank. He respected her for that restraint. She wasn’t a person who made you feel like a pawn even if it was essentially your job to be one, and she wasn’t someone to give out unnecessary praise.

Late in the afternoon about a week after their arrival on D’Qar, a group of them took a break to eat and discuss the plan for attacking Starkiller, which would unfortunately begin with a presentation given by Hux to the people who would carry it out, very few of whom he’d met yet.

Rey was there for insight based on her Force abilities which Leia had commented were remarkable for someone who hadn’t even known she had such powers a few weeks before. Finn was present as well due to his insider knowledge of First Order trooper protocol, which Hux admitted exceeded his own as far as practical application of attack plans were concerned. Poe was there, of course, as the leader of Black Squadron, their most elite combination of pilots who would do the most important and complicated aspects of disabling, if not destroying entirely, the thing Hux had dedicated the better part of his professional life to creating. Han was there because he was integral to the only lightly outlined plans to retrieve Kylo from the mess unharmed if it were possible to do so. All Leia had said in regard to the high possibility of failure in this regard was, “He’ll make the choices he makes. He always has . . .”

Rey had an uncomfortable habit of insinuating herself physically into other people’s personal space and had chosen on this occasion to seat herself immediately at Hux’s elbow during their meal. He had the sense that on this afternoon she was attempting to quietly use her powers on him in a way he wasn’t entirely sure of the purpose. It wasn’t like the way Kylo had gone about it. She wasn’t invading his thoughts, or trying to control his physical movements, but he felt her powers wrapping him in an almost tangible layer of something light and mildly irritating which seemed to be pressing gently at his cells like a doctor feeling his body for injuries.

Poe was at the other end of the table relating, with a not uncharacteristic, but still more childlike than usual energy, a story to Han about having been on Yavin 4 during an award ceremony when he was four at which Han, Luke and Chewbacca had been commended for their work in bringing down the Empire. Han listened to this all with a thin patience, radiating what seemed to be a hardwired sort of grumpiness that Hux associated with much older people than Han was. Poe told him that it was meeting them all briefly then which had made him want to join the Resistance when he was given the chance years after. Han responded to all of this with an outwardly humble-seeming warning after Poe finally ran out of breath.

“Right. Well, good luck, Kid. You’ll need it. Luke—if he were here—would probably tell you that some greater force would determine the outcome of what you’re planning and maybe he’s right for him, but for people like us, it’s mostly luck.”

Hux saw that Han was smiling when Poe looked away, betraying that he was flattered by all of the things Poe had said to him despite his declaration that they were at the mercy of a not very forgiving series of chance and circumstance.

Hux knew he needed to be focusing on what he’d say to everyone in the briefing room after they were done eating, but he wanted to have a moment alone with Poe before that happened, a moment he wasn’t granted as Leia pulled him away before the rest and Hux didn’t see him again until they were standing around a large circular holoprojection table in the center of their operations building.

Leia explained in an introductory way, giving as few details as possible, that Hux was a defector from the Order who had given them information they were hoping to use to end the current greatest threat to their safety if not take down the entire First Order.

“Some of you,” Hux began without transitioning from Leia’s short speech with any sort of pointless greetings for them, “Were around during the fall of the Empire and are already aware, I’m sure, of the risk inherent in this type of direct attack on an army as well-organized and outfitted as the one you’re about to face.”

Some of the faces, lit up from below by the currently empty blue light of the projector, nodded and stared off into space looking grim, but not frightened.

“The rest of you, even though you’ve likely had some experience already fighting them, should be given a more . . . graphic explanation of what you’re about to face. While we can’t know exactly what kind of forces will be present at the time you arrive at the location of your attack, you should expect more stormtroopers than you can count if you’re on the ground and more ships than you could possibly shoot down if you’re in the air. They will not hesitate to kill you, and you shouldn’t falter either. They are trained—no, _programmed,_ not to protect each other for any reason which does not involve attack formations. You shouldn’t rely on them trying to save each other in your decision making out there. They are not like you.”

Hux paused to glance around at them, really just wanting an opportunity to see Poe’s reaction to his words before he continued, but Poe wasn’t looking at him, he was tapping his fingers on the edge of the table and looked less self-assured than he usually did. It concerned Hux. He didn’t want Poe going into this situation with anything less than his absolute highest level of belief in his own invincibility. He understood that for people like him, it was part of their success to be that way during a procedure like this one.

“The target,” Hux said, trying to squash his concern about Poe’s visible anxiety until later, “Is a weapon capable of destroying an entire solar system in a single blast, as I am sure you’re all aware by now . . .”

“So, it’s another Death Star,” said a man with long wavy white hair that Hux hadn’t seen before that day who sounded like he thought too much was being made of this briefing.

“Not really,” Hux said. He tapped at a panel in front of him and a round, blue-green orb popped into being in the center of the table’s beam. “This was the Death Star,” he said. “And this . . . is Starkiller Base.” Another, much larger projection appeared and then grew, forcing the image of the Death Star to the side, until it completely dominated the space, making the first image look like a pebble at the foot of a massive, sprawling range of imposing mountains.

A ripple of gasping and stunned, unconscious shoulder and hand movements sped through the people gathered, and Hux fought to keep any pleasure at their awe from reaching his face. While they didn’t know it was his creation, Leia and Poe knew, and he wasn’t about to wreck the trust he’d won with them by showing how much pride he still took in his weapon and the respect it commanded even as just an innocuous computer program.

He went over its features calmly, tapping items on his screen to send them up into the projection as he pointed out the locations of shield generators, gun turrets, stormtrooper barracks, and the center of the planet itself which contained its innovative and deadly core that had the power to safely contain a star in its heart and repurpose its heat into what had obliterated Hosnian Prime and its unfortunate outlying sister planets.

“Okay,” Leia said, after Hux had exhausted all of his materials—nearly a week’s worth of around the clock calculating and programming summed up in fifteen minutes of possibly pointless explanation since he lacked the same confidence in the Resistance’s skills in regard to carrying out such a mad plan to any sort of satisfying conclusion.

“You have until 0600 hours to do whatever you need to do to prepare and then we’ll execute,” she said.

_Or be executed_ , Hux thought morbidly, aware that this included himself as well if those he’d personally trained to be the perfect army had already discovered the location of the planet they stood on. Hux thought it was odd that Leia was not intending to send them off immediately which was what he’d expected and why he had wanted to be alone with Poe before the meeting.

She dismissed them all without any sort of flowery reassurances beyond a muttered, “may the Force be with you,” which only Hux may have been close enough to hear and which sounded more like the signing of a death warrant than an expression of good will. She knew she was sending many of them off to die, and she hated it. It was the most glaring difference between the way she commanded and the way Hux had. She would get a list of names back after rather than the emotionless tally Hux was used to—lost soldiers just another line on a list of whatever ships and equipment had been destroyed during an operation.

Poe was at his side a few moments after the rest as had departed. He placed his hand on Hux’s lower back which Hux allowed since they were alone except for Rey and Finn who were having what looked like a very intense, private conversation in the farthest corner from them.

“I’m just going to check in out there and make sure everything is in order and then I’ll meet you back at home,” Poe said, his thumb brushing a painful reminder of a touch that would soon be inaccessible across Hux’s skin through his shirt.

Hux nodded and didn’t resist when Poe also pressed a kiss to his jaw before departing.

Home. Poe’s house was now being referred to as home for both of them. It wasn’t the first time it had been used like that, but it felt more significant at that moment. If Poe didn’t return from this, would Hux stay? Would their home become just his?

He thought not. He thought it was unlikely that, even if he lived in one place, be it there or somewhere else for the rest of his life, he would ever again use that word to describe it if Poe wasn’t there also.

It was already turning to night when Hux went back outside again and this felt ominous to him, reminded him time was moving forward inexorably, the hours until Poe’s departure leaking away at a steady pace.

And he had another, much more immediate and nearly all-consuming feeling which plagued him all the way back to the house. He’d been reminded of being in command and how much giving speeches to receptive audiences who would take his words and shape the realities of hundreds, even thousands of people electrified him, made him feel like he’d taken a drug that transformed him into something more than a person—a solid peg around which history would be forced to turn until the effect of what he’d set in motion had concluded one way or another.

It was exciting on an intellectual level and it echoed through him, activating all of his senses in hyper-powerful ways he couldn’t control. He paced around the front room, seeing, hearing, and smelling all of its details with a terrible and also lovely clarity. This extraordinarily elevated state of general arousal shifted abruptly and sharpened into one of more specific arousal which was all physical as soon as Poe came back, looking preoccupied and restless.

Hux gave him a few seconds after shutting the door before he flung himself into Poe’s space, running his hands down Poe’s chest and back, pushing him into the door he’d just shut and forcing his knee between Poe’d thighs in a demanding way.

Poe stiffened at first, startled by this attack, but melted into it quickly.

“You’re seriously turned on right now?” he asked, not in an accusatory way, but one which sounded a bit hesitant.

“Yes. Very,” Hux said, without pause, without shame, flipping one hand and inserting into the front of Poe’s pants without undoing them. “Is that okay?”

Poe made a harsh sound of pleasure when Hux’s hand wrapped around him before he said, “Yeah. Um, it’s fine, I just—uhn, _fuck_ . . .” he said when Hux bent to apply his teeth to the soft flesh under his jaw.

“Hux,” he said in a torn little voice that made Hux feel dizzy with want, until he added, “I have to go.”

“But Leia said you weren’t . . . not for hours—”

“We just got word from recon. They’re charging the weapon now. We have to go.”

“What? You can’t attack it _while_ it’s being charged. We didn’t plan for that. It changes a lot of things. Poe, no. We have to wait.”

“We can’t. We’re the next target here.”

“Then evacuate the bloody planet! It’s too dangerous to try it this way.”

Poe shrugged like he didn’t know how to explain it. “It’s what we do, Hux. It’s always too dangerous.”

This was the thing which, if he was honest, truly unnerved him about being on Poe’s side during a war: it _was_ always too dangerous, they were always ill-equipped.

Poe kissed him lightly and then went around him into the bedroom. Hux followed feeling like a duckling trailing its parent. He watched with a growing unease and nausea as Poe changed into his flight suit, watched him checking pockets and adjusting straps. Poe didn’t acknowledge him again until he was nearly dressed.

“You can walk down with me,” he offered, clipping a buckle on his lower back, not looking up until after he’d spoken, his face unreadable.

“You make me sound needy.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Poe asked, his question genuine. “It’s okay to need people.”

“Needing people and being needy are not the same.”

“How would you know? Have you ever needed anyone before?” Poe asked, not an unkind way.

Hux just watched silently as Poe finished attaching the last of the gear.

“This isn’t safe . . .” Hux repeated, almost a whisper, not sure if it was only for himself or for Poe as well.

“Come on,” Poe said, holding out his hand for Hux who took it feeling sick and bitter.

It was nearly all the way dark but people filled the streets, everyone moving around aimlessly—agitated like a kicked anthill. Hux wasn’t sure if this was normal or if everyone had been told about the charging weapon. It wasn’t an announcement Hux would have made, not out of mercy, but because it would cause this sort of interruptive energy which he hated. He didn’t protest to Poe’s hand in his, pulling him along, because he might have gotten lost in the crowd if he hadn’t.

There was a line of X-Wings waiting on the tarmac when they reached it. The lights around the area all blazing, making dark shadows stand out everywhere, making Hux squint against their glare.

Poe led him to the far end of the line of ships where there was an older black model with orange stripes accenting its sides. It was scratched and dented and didn’t look safe at all.

“Wait,” Hux said, and Poe turned, his helmet hanging from one hand. “I just need to say something here . . .”

After thirty seconds of silence in which Hux tried to speak and couldn’t Poe said, “I know the base takes a couple of hours to charge, but . . .” Poe coaxed, smiling affectionately, and Hux found his voice finally.

“You’re . . . sentimental and reckless, and I _dislike_ you intensely right now.”

Poe grinned, stepping close enough that he had to tilt his head back to see Hux’s face properly.

“And you’re pompous and selfish, but I still love you.”

Hux pressed his forehead to Poe’s and breathed out.

“Come back. Just come back alive, and I’ll say it then.”

“What if I don’t?” Poe challenged.

“You _will_.”

“Will you regret not saying it if I di—”

“Oh, shut up. Just shut up. _I love you, too._ Okay?”

“Yeah, that’s okay with me,” Poe said, and Hux rolled his eyes.

A now familiar whooshing sound signaled the arrival of BB-8, and for once Hux didn’t feel resentful. While BB may have annoyed him basically all the time on the ground, Poe needed him in the air. Poe knelt next to him after the droid bumped him in the leg a few times.

Then it turned it’s body the way a human would turn their shoulder away for privacy though he had no front or back that Hux was aware of. Poe copied him, though, smiling conspiratorially. Hux looked away but peeked after and saw that BB had his head turned just enough he could see behind him like he was watching Hux out of the corner of his vision. Poe stood again after a few seconds, his hand closed around something which he stuffed in a pocket on the side of his flak vest. BB zipped around behind the steps leading to the cockpit without another glance at ether of them.

“I don’t suppose you’ll let me kiss you out here . . .” Poe said.

“Not unless you’d like to die before you even get in that stupid, rickety piece of shit you call a plane.”

Poe kissed him anyway, and Hux allowed it, found he enjoyed that Poe wasn’t ashamed to be seen with him, kissing him openly and possessively.

“You’ve ruined me,” Hux sighed when his lips were freed finally. 

“Well I won’t apologize as you were kind of a jerk before.”

“You’re kind of a jerk now,” Hux countered.

Poe stood on his toes for a few seconds to whisper in Hux’s ear. “I don’t really have time to give you a spanking for that right now, but I wouldn’t plan anything that requires you to sit for a few days after I get back . . .” Then he kissed Hux’s cheek with a sweetness that contrasted sharply with what he’d said and likely would have made any passersby think they were just being cuddly.

“Go be a hero,” Hux said, stepping away and folding his arms behind him formally.

“Just not your hero?” Poe teased.

“I don’t need a hero.”

“That’s okay,” Poe said, starting to climb the ladder into his ship. He turned for a second before stepping inside and said, “I’ll take your heart.”

“Just bring it back with you  . . .” Hux said, but not until after the hatch had closed, ensuring Poe wouldn’t hear him voice this pointless bit of sentimentalism.

He walked quickly back off the runway and watched as the planes took, falling into a tight, practiced formation as they vanished into the atmosphere.

“We’re leaving now as well,” said a soft voice at his elbow.

Hux looked down and found Rey there, smiling up at him. That she was—for once—not shouting felt ominous to him.

“Bren—” she started.

“It’s Hux,” he corrected.

“I know. I know who you are,” she said, looping her fingers around his elbow in a comfortable way.

“Did Finn tell you?” he asked.

“No, I saw you in Ben’s thoughts when I was on your ship. You weren’t there anymore by that point, but you were . . . very visible in his mind. Up on the surface.”

“I see . . . what kind of thoughts were these?” he asked cautiously.

“Nothing you need to feel embarrassed about.”

Hux sniffed, doubting very much that she would know which things Hux would find embarrassing for another person to know about. She pressed her fingers into his arm gently, the way you do before letting go.

“I’m going with you,” he said, deciding as he spoke. He turned his head to find that she didn’t look like this was new information though he was sure she hadn’t read his mind. “It’s different now with the base being charged. It would take too long to explain it to someone, so it’s better if I just go along.”

She nodded like she expected this, maybe she’d come there to collect him, not to say goodbye. She was a part of the landing party who would actually be on the surface to disable the shields. There would be only one ship involved in this part as getting to the surface required a dangerous maneuver only one pilot was willing to perform.

They walked past the now empty runway to another, smaller landing pad at the back where the Millennium Falcon, the disc-shaped ship they’d flown away from Dagobah aboard, waited with an open door, spilling weak, yellow light onto the figures at the base of the loading ramp.

Han and his usual co-pilot Chewbacca were there, speaking to Leia. Finn stood behind them, stepping forward as soon as Rey was in sight, not saying anything but looking like he wanted to blurt a number of things.

Leia hugged Han and the Wookie and then turned to Rey and Hux. She smiled grimly, and then turned and took a coat from the woman standing behind her. She handed it to Hux without a word. They all were wearing similar clothing as Hux had informed them of Starkiller’s extremely cold climate the last time he’d seen it. Leia smiled, and patted his arm before walking away.

The coat fit him perfectly and given that everyone else was already wearing theirs, that meant this one had been brought specifically for him, confirming Hux’s suspicion that Rey had expected him to go already and had told Leia about it.

He followed them up into the body of the ship, looking down at the coat and finding that there was a little black decal over the left breast pocket: the simple, rounded symbol of the Rebel Alliance which had been adopted by the Resistance as theirs. He didn’t have time to dwell on the irony of what was happening just then, but he put his hand up and pressed the image under his palm, not associating it as strongly with the side he was working for as with the same decal on Poe’s flight vest. It linked them, hovering identically over their respective hearts, bridging the distance between them.

He kept his hand there, eyes closed, as they took off, Rey’s arm linked with his, her head resting on his shoulder.

* * *

 

Hux had moved to the cockpit and was standing with his feet apart for balance as they came out of hyperspace. 

“There,” he said, pointing to the screen in front of Han where a smaller version of his Starkiller model was floating, now superimposed over a real time image of the planet. “Try to get as close to that dot there as you can,” he instructed.

“Will do. Everybody hang on,” Han said.

Hux tensed his fingers on the back of the seat. Rey and Finn were seated at the back of the cockpit on the floor. Hux turned his head and saw they were holding hands. He thought of what Poe had said about not being involved with people you had to fight wars with and thought also of him and Poe doing this same thing, sitting on the floor of this same—no, best not to think about then. 

He turned back to the front windows just as they entered hyperspace a second time, and came out of it a half second later, the pretty, snow-covered surface of the planet seeming to have jumped towards them rather than the other way around. He winced as they crashed through trees but didn’t shout or lose his balance.

They skidded when they finally hit the surface, the ship spinning wildly in the snow. A few seconds of silence followed after the ship had settled.

“Good landing,” Han said, reminding him of Poe again, of how he’d told Hux their crash on Dagobah hadn’t been so bad because he was uninjured.

The comlink crackled and Poe’s voice came through it a second later, sounding cheery and elated like they were headed to a party and not into what would soon be a full blown battlefield.

“We just saw you whizz by Falcon. Do you copy?”

“Yup,” Han confirmed.

“Any problems yet?”

“No. Everyone’s alive . . . I think.” He turned as he said this to check that he wasn’t a liar but not like he wasn’t already sure. 

“Good landing then,” Poe said, laughing. He sounded like he was enjoying himself immensely, and it absolutely turned Hux’s stomach to ice. He needed to be _focusing,_ not making stupid fucking pilot jokes.

“We’ve got troopers already,” Hux said, pointing out the front window which was half buried in snow. There were a dozen stormtroopers, dressed in heavy snow gear, coming across the field where they’d landed.

“Hux?” Poe’s voice came back over the com sounding strained.

“Yes.”

“Are you on the base?” he asked, like there was anywhere else Hux could be, given that Poe knew which ship he was talking with and had just seen where it had been.

“Things were different. They needed me here.”

“I—”

“Listen to me,” Hux said, cutting him off. “As long as there’s light, we’ll have a chance. No light means no sun which means they’re ready. Do you understand?” His instructions weren’t complicated so he wasn’t actually asking if Poe had understood him, he was making sure Poe understood that the job hadn’t changed just because Hux wasn’t back on D’Qar waiting like a house pet.

“Yeah, I copy,” Poe said, his tone flat.

“Don’t be careful out there, Black Leader,” Hux added, keeping his own voice official. He didn’t want Poe losing his nerve or hesitating in his job because he wasn’t sure if Hux was still on the planet when the time came to destroy the oscillator.

There was a pause long enough that Hux was wondering if something had happened in the air but then Poe said, “I won’t,” in a determined, steady voice.

“Do they have weapons strong enough to hurt the ship?” Han asked, already out of his seat and pulling open a cabinet behind them.

“They’ll be too busy trying to kill us,” Hux answered, accepting a blaster rifle, feeling his old academy training flood back into his muscles as he checked it.

A sharp, needling wind stabbed at their faces as the door opened, and they stayed low, going down the ramp in a tight line.

“Which way?” Rey asked, her hand on Hux’s shoulder to stay him.

He scanned the landscape, unsure now that they were on the ground. He spotted a series of three blinking green lights, just visible about eighty yards away on the opposite side of where they’d exited the ship. It wasn’t towards the troopers, but once they’d left the cover of the Falcon, they’d be exposed for most of that trek.

“It’s there,” Hux said, pointing under the rear edge of the ship.

“Stay close to me,” Rey said and again Hux felt her Force presence wrapping him like a blanket, or a shield which covered his body exactly.

They darted out from under the canopy of the ship and made for the lights in a messy line. They’d gone twenty of those yards before the first bolt flew by them, hitting the snow at Finn’s feet and leaving a sizzling black mark which was covered quickly by new snow being blown around on the surface of the packed inches already fallen.

There was an explosion, muffled a bit by the wind, and Hux turned in time to see half of the first line of troopers fly into the air and then vanish in the swirling white. Another blast followed this, fired from some much more powerful weapon than the one Hux had, carried by Chewbacca who seemed relatively unfazed as far as aim was concerned even in the buffeting winds—he’d taken out the other half of the line, pushing the approaching troops back a few possibly life-saving yards.

Finn had paused as well, his stance one of a stormtrooper suddenly, his blaster raised like he could pick them all off, but Hux shoved at his shoulder as he passed.

“Just keep going!” he shouted. “You know you can’t fight them like that.”

Finn dropped his weapon to his side, a mix of emotions on his face. He’d been ready to do it if he had to, but unlike Hux who had no attachment to any of the armored troops coming at them, Finn could have known any one of them. Hux wouldn’t have said that should have mattered before, but every encounter he’d had with the boy told him that Finn was no regular trooper. The programming hadn’t sunk into him as deeply somehow. He cared. Hux wasn’t sure how this quality hadn’t led to Finn being killed in battle long before his defection.

The wind turned out to be in their favor and they managed to make it to the building topped with lights without actually being hit with anything. This was part one: disabling the shields, and Hux checked it in his head like he was highlighting an item on a list. He didn’t think about any of the other tasks they had ahead. Only this one thing mattered for now.

There were two troopers out front who hadn’t been paying attention and were shot down without warning by Han and Finn as they approached. Hux didn’t glance at their motionless bodies as they went by, but he saw Finn do it and pitied him.

They found more inside, but they weren’t, obviously, expecting anyone but other First Order guards and were taken down just as quickly, one managing to land a grazing hit on Chewbacca who was the biggest target and which may have been accidental as the trooper had fired while falling.

Hux felt his posture change as soon as they were inside the clean, silent hallway. The floor was glossy and the lighting crisp and cold. It was what home had always been to him though he’d never thought of it that way. He’d never used the word home to describe any place except his house with Poe, and he had yet to say that out loud.

He led them down a passage to a set of sliding double doors and pressed his palm to the plate next to it, wondering only after doing so if it would still recognize him as having authority to be there or if alarms would sound in the corridors.

The panel turned green which surprised him a little, and the doors slid back to on a small room with a wall of screens and a control panel under them. A person in shining chromium armor was seated in one of two chairs. He hadn’t expected to find anyone he knew so the presence of Phasma was startling enough that if she had reacted quickly she could have easily killed him before he had a chance to defend himself.

Finn, though, hadn’t paused but charged forward and held his blaster on her, looking fearless and mildly crazed.

“FN-two-one-eight-seven,” she said calmly in her lilting, strange accent. She’d been raised outside of the traditional society of the Order and joined at some point after she’d reached adulthood. She was only a few years younger than Hux and for the first time it seemed odd to him that he knew very little about her beyond that.

“Yeah,” Finn confirmed and then added, “And I’m in charge now.”

She turned her head to stare at Hux, and he could only guess at the expression on her face hidden behind her helmet, but was nearly certain it was closer to exasperation than fear.

“Lower the shields, Captain,” Hux said.

She didn’t ask why he was doing it. She didn’t ask anything, she just complied, tapping the console’s glowing screen a few times. There was an image of the base being displayed there above her, identical to the one back on the Falcon and the one maybe still floating abandoned over the table in the Resistance base’s tactical room. They watched as the green aura around the skeletal outline of the planet clicked away in sections, flashing red for a moment and then the whole thing turning white, making it look like an orb-shaped spiderweb—flimsy and easily crushable.

“I thought Kylo was lying,” she said as they all quietly watched the base cycle through these graphics. “I never took you for a traitor, General.”

Then she reached out again and quickly tapped something into the panel. Hux leaped forward to stop her, but it was too late. She’d halted the charging of the base, forcing it to stop pulling energy and begin it’s next phase. It wasn’t supposed to be done that way. It was insanely dangerous, in fact, to leave the star they’d been drawing from half consumed.

He swore, attempting an override, but there was no undoing it. The base was only at a third of its power, but it would be enough to obliterate everyone on D’Qar even if it didn’t destroy the planet itself. The secondary phase took about twenty minutes, and Hux was already counting in his head, every second precious now. Even if they managed to take out the oscillator, that star had no timer and could implode on itself at any time, destroying the base more thoroughly than the Resistance could have with their small fleet of X-Wings.

“You realize you’ve killed yourself as well as us here?” Hux said, turning on her.

“You mean you weren’t intending to kill me anyway?” she asked, her tone sedate and in it a hint of judgement like she found him pathetic for not having planned to do that.

Hux didn’t have an answer for this. He hadn’t expected her there and had no plan for what he might have done if he’d known. He’d always respected her, and he felt an unmistakable sinking feeling of sadness that she had assumed he would murder her without thought. It felt stronger there in a place which reminded him of who he once was. It felt—

“What do we do with her?” Finn asked, not directly to anyone.

“You got a garbage chute?” Han suggested.

“No,” Hux said and then to Phasma. “Get off the planet, Ari. Just . . . go. Now. It’s not safe here.”

He reached out and took her weapon and then gestured for everyone to leave the room. He left last, backing away, wishing in a way he never would have before that he could see her face.

He led them out a back way, a little unsettled by the lack of troops. They should have been there already. Once they got outside the reason became obvious. The Resistance squadron hadn’t hesitated as soon as the shield dropped, and the air was filled with ships, the ground with troops firing upwards or running from plasma cannon blasts. They were cut off from their ship if they went in a straight line, but they could loop around and maybe make it if they weren’t killed accidentally on the way even if they avoided the stormtroopers.

Hux whispered all of this to them and suggested another path back to the ship. As they went out from under the cover of the building, Hux couldn’t resist searching the sky, looking for Poe’s distinctive ship, but the light had changed, tinting the snow and the air with an orangey color and making it hard to see anything clearly even on the ground. This was helpful in that they weren’t going to be noticed at least unless they intentionally drew attention to themselves.

Hux’s path took them through a stand of trees, some of which had caught fire creating a disorienting maze of black trunks and smog which was almost impossible to navigate at any significant speed, but it worked fine as an escape route. They came out of the trees on the right side of the plane and were across the short distance and up the ramp in a minute with Hux in the lead.

He dashed into the center of the ship and sprinted up into the cockpit, sliding on the flooring from the snow melting off his boots, making him come to a messy halt when he got there, banging his hip into the armrest of the copilot’s seat. He guessed about seven minutes total had passed since Phasma had locked the base into its firing position and no one in the air knew about it. He slapped the comlink button and practically shouted into it.

“Black Leader, this is Falcon. Come in.”

There was silence in which Hux waited, feeling increasingly ill. He pressed it again ready to repeat himself when a shadow fell over the windows above him. He looked up, climbing onto the pilot’s seat to see out above the snow and spotted an orange and black X-Wing doing a loop right above them.

He ducked and pushed the button again. “This isn’t the time for showing off,” he reprimanded.

Finally, Poe’s voice came back. “There’s always time for style, Baby.”

“Did you just call me _baby_?”

Poe’s response was just laughter, he sounded triumphant.

Hux made a face, was about to respond to this with something rude when another thought occurred to him. “Are there other people on this channel?”

“A couple,” Poe said, the laugh in his voice telling Hux that it was his entire fleet hearing them.

“Lovely.”

“Relax. We got the oscillator. Everything is fine.”

“Everything is _not_ fine. That sun is going to collapse.”

“What?”

“I don’t have time to explain, we all just need to get away from here as fast as possible.”

“Copy,” Poe said, serious again. This was followed by him checking in with all of his fellows by their call names, and Hux selfishly hated the length of the list, knowing Poe would refuse to jump away until every one of them were also ready.

Someone cleared their throat loudly and Hux looked down to find Han standing between the seats. He climbed down, issuing vague apologies and then awkwardly leaning in to wipe water off the seat with the sleeve of his coat when Han looked from him to the melted snow in an obvious way.

The ground under them lurched in a sickening way as he moved to join Rey and Finn against the back wall, and he had to grab at the door frame to keep from falling. Rey patted his arm sympathetically, pulling a compulsory smile from him which felt unnatural on his face.

He leaned against the wall and shut his eyes, wondering if Phasma had heeded his warning and fled the planet or if he was leaving her behind to die. He bizarrely wished they’d taken her as a prisoner but there was no way of fixing that now.

They were rocked uncomfortably as they rose into the air and Hux opened his eyes again as they listed frighteningly to one side. Through the now clear window of the cockpit he saw them speeding through trails of smoke and dissipating balls of fire hanging in the air from dying planes. Bits of glowing metal from some explosion above them pinged off the glass and Hux noted their color distantly, just to confirm they weren’t black or orange though he couldn’t have said for sure.

Once they’d left the planet’s atmosphere, they could see the shapes of the other planes more clearly and Hux counted them. Eight sets of lights glowing in the tight rectangle formation of X-Wing engines. Eight out of the sixteen they’d arrived with. They looped gracefully, falling in order and then disappearing in turn, their bodies frozen in a stretched position for a half second before they snapped away. Hux counted six gone before they started their own jump. He couldn’t have told any of them apart to know if Poe’s ship was among those which had escaped and radio silence prevailed as they shot forward into hyperspace themselves, a blazing red light which wasn’t usual of light speed travel chasing them as they fled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I asked someone how long it would take for a sun to explode after becoming unstable and they said "a couple million years" to which I went, "K. But how 'bout like less than twenty minutes instead?" and carried right on with my bullshit. 
> 
> Not like Starkiller makes sense anyway.
> 
> Oh, and yeah, comlinks are not built in devices but handheld ones apparently. I just didn't know what to call an on-board communications system, and I really like the sound of comlink. It's fun.


	11. Search Every Star System

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know shit about space. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Their were still only six planes ahead of them when they popped back out of hyperspace above D’Qar. Hux couldn’t see behind them to check if the other two were safely returned as well, and he was forced to simply wait until they were on the ground to see who was left. 

He dived for the back of the ship before they touched down and ducked to slip out of the door before the ramp had even touched the ground, jumping the several feet between and sprinting out around the building that blocked his view of the main runway.

He didn’t need to do it, as he could see just from where he was standing that all six of the planes on the tarmac were silver accented with blue, but he ran all the way to the other end anyway hoping maybe his brain was confused in the pre-dawn light. He spun around when there was nowhere else to go, nowhere else to look on the ground, and searched the sky instead.

It was grey-blue, half-hidden by clouds and showed no signs of any other planes’ engines firing above them.

A short person in an orange flight suit just like Poe’s approached him and grabbed his shoulders. He looked down into the face of Jess Pava, the girl from Poe’s squadron who he’d met in the shop his first evening on the planet. He stared at her without expression. The way she’d accosted him suggested she had information to covey which she wanted to get across quickly, but she just stood there for several seconds, motionless and watching him, her hands shaking on his arms slightly. She opened her mouth, but then shut it again without saying anything.

“Does your ship record the flight paths of the others in your fleet?” he asked tonelessly, sounding like he was debriefing her as if she were one of his own pilots.

“No,” she said, “But . . . but—my droid, she said Beebee confirmed they _started_ to jump . . . I don’t see what could have happened but maybe they just got spit out somewhere else for . . . some reason . . .”

Her explanation was weak, and she seemed to know it, dropping her eyes halfway through speaking.

“How long have you been a pilot?” Hux asked.

“Four years officially. Two of those with Poe.”

“Have you ever seen anything like what you’re describing happen before?”

“No,” she admitted but then added quickly, “But, Poe—I’ve seen him do things no other pilot has done. He always makes it back. Every time.”

“Thank you, Jessika,” he said formally. She released him and fast-walked away back towards the planes, her face angled down, watching her feet and not the sky, confirming to Hux that she didn’t believe her own words. She wasn’t expecting Poe this time.

He saw Finn and Rey appear around the edge of the building where they’d landed the Falcon and he backed up, using the boxy body of a refueling truck to shield himself. He didn’t want to speak to anyone else. Rey might—no, definitely would, try to hug him, and he knew he’d vomit if she tried it, a watery sensation in the back of his mouth suggesting he might do so anyway, regardless of who he encountered.

He waited until everyone he recognized even superficially had left the area before exiting the safety of the truck and stepping back onto the main runway.

He walked back to the exact center of the space bordering the edge of the tarmac and sat, cross-legged on the ground where it transitioned from the pavement into dirt with a few patches of scrubby green grass.

His heart felt tipped sideways and half buried, felt like it was flooding with the thick sticky blood it should have pumped but was instead leaking, drowning itself with each weak beat—like their TIE which he then realized, even before anything had happened with Poe, that he’d always thought of as theirs, never his, never a First Order ship, but _their_ ship, their temporary shared property, which they'd inhabited for only a few hours and then spent weeks tending. He wished—not for the first time that week and no less unbelievably than the others—that they were back there, alone on that marshy, foul planet he would never have guessed would seem someday inviting. 

The sun had started to edge towards the lower half of the sky when a footfall sounded behind him, alerting him to someone approaching carefully. They sat very close by his side, and he closed his eyes to avoid confronting their identity for a few more seconds. He expected Rey and tensed himself for her coming touch.

But it wasn’t her. It was Leia and seeing her seated on the ground was strange enough that he didn’t register she was holding a cup out in front of him at first. He took it, drank from it robotically, found it was a hot liquid he couldn’t name but which tasted chocolatey and had an undertone of spiciness that burned along his tongue. He pulled the front of his coat shut across his chest though it wasn’t chilly out, more like he was just trying to contain the heat of the drink in his body so he had something to focus on other than the thinly concealed pity in her expression.

“You still have a place here if you want it,” she said quietly, like she didn’t want their conversation overheard though there was no one close enough to hear it. “Both as a citizen and a skilled strategist if that’s something you’d be interested in.”

“Are you offering me a job, General?” he asked, not angry, actually grateful she wasn’t trying to offer empty condolences.

“Was the First Order’s entire fleet present at the base?” she answered with a question.

“No.”

“Then, yes, that’s what I’m offering.”

“I had personal reasons for what I did in disabling Starkiller,” he said, not declining exactly, but wanting to be honest about his loyalties still. He wasn’t sure where they were exactly, but it wasn’t to the Resistance quite yet.

She nodded, then took a heavy breath before going on. “I hate to ask right now but—”

“We didn’t see Ben,” he said, not needing her to voice her thought entirely to know what she was asking. He felt he should add something, some small gift in return for her fair treatment of him which he knew was beyond her duty, and maybe even her right to give for those who’d died as a result of his invention. She probably should have imprisoned him and gained the information she’d needed through other less soft methods than she did. “But,” he said, glad he could speak honestly in regard to this at least. “I didn’t expect to. There was no reason for him to be there so it’s unlikely he was present.”

“Any guesses about where he might be?” she asked, her eyes on the cup in his hands like she wanted to remind him of her bringing it to him, maybe thinking of it as a direct exchange between them—a cup of burning chocolate for information about the whereabouts of her lost son.

“No,” he said too quickly and then sought to amend it somehow. “But, I do know of an only slightly damaged TIE fighter you’re welcome to have now. It would make searching into First Order territory less difficult I’d imagine . . .”

“Skilled,” she said, restating her earlier compliment of his strategic abilities. “Of course, there is no ‘First Order’ territory now. It’s all a war zone. But I get what you mean.” She stared at him for a few moments and then added, “If he’s still out there, you won’t bring him back by sitting here. I’m not exactly a stranger to waiting, and it’s . . . easier if you keep moving while you do it.”

This advice, while logical, felt impossible to apply at that moment. His limbs felt disconnected and useless. Even in a less physical sense, he couldn’t fathom it.

“It’s okay to take a minute, too,” she added permissively. “But, there’s a point when it’s harder to get going again if you do it for too long.”

“How long did you take when Ben left?”

“Too long. Almost. That’s how I know it’s better to go on with . . . anything you can.”

“I don’t have anything to go on with,” he said, knowing this denial sounded childish and obstinate, but not caring.

“Then look for something,” she said firmly. “Don’t make his return harder when it happens by finding you as anything less than the person he knew when he left.”

“Which is _who_ exactly?” he asked, feeling like she was trying to start a fight with him which felt good, actually—revitalizing.

“I have no idea. But I’m sure _he_ does, and, knowing Poe, it sure as hell isn’t someone who’d sit around crying and waiting for someone else to fix his problems.”

“I’m not _crying_.”

“But you’re not doing _anything else_ either,” she came back mercilessly, and he felt a strong, incongruous desire to hug her. “If it were you missing he’d—”

“Search every star system,” Hux said, recalling his determination to do exactly that thing on the night he’d realized he loved Poe.

“Something like that,” she said, smiling.

“Is he important enough to your cause that you’d offer resources for that sort of thing?”

“Well, I’m very _busy_ myself,” she said, “But, if it were important to one of our key people, I’m sure we could figure something out.”

“Are you trying to bribe me into helping you in exchange for this?”

“Not trying, no. Doing. I think you’d hardly respect me as an ally if I didn’t,” she said.

“You’re right. I wouldn’t.”

“I have all the data you’ll need to start, including his last known location. You can start whenever you’re done here with this . . .” she said waving around at the silent runway, the empty sky and then at him still sitting in the dirt like a broken droid.

“I’m done,” he said, not willing to look pathetic or unable for another second, even if it both felt perhaps irreversibly true. He got to his feet and unconsciously offered his hand to her.

“After you, General,” she said holding out her own hand for him to go ahead of her once she was standing.

“You’re keeping me as general?”

She smirked. “Let’s call it a nickname for now.”

He laughed shortly, his respect for her growing by the minute.

“You know he talks about you like you’re some kind of . . . something just under a god,” he said as they started towards the building which housed their headquarters.

“Poe thinks far too much of everyone he likes,” she answered modestly.

“That’s true.”

It was also true that Hux was absolutely set upon getting as close as possible to being the too much version of himself that Poe saw before they met again.

* * *

 

Returning to the section of space where Starkiller had exploded was both very dangerous and very stupid, which was why Hux didn’t hesitate to make it the starting location of their search rather than going to the point at which Poe’s plane appeared to have vanished about a quarter of the distance between the site of the battle and the jump point next to D’Qar. Starting at Starkiller was what Poe would have done, and that idea, though he never admitted it out loud, had been his guidepost for many of his decisions surrounding their search plan. 

They jumped a lot further out than they would have when otherwise approaching a specific area, but it was still no guarantee they weren’t about to come out on the outlying reaches of a black hole where that sun had been before. He didn’t know for certain that the sun had exploded, it just seemed likely based on the flash which had engulfed them on their last jump from there.

It was just him and Rey on this trip, flying a very old Y-wing starfighter which was all that Leia had been willing to offer for this initial scouting mission. It was reasonable, it just meant that if they found him, they’d have to leave and come back with a larger ship depending on _how much_ they found. The Y-wing was originally intended for bombing runs on planets and was extremely durable as its main purpose was getting very close to a ground target and back out again without being destroyed. It wouldn’t save them from being shredded to subatomic bits by a black hole, but it would survive a debris field admirably.

It had been very strongly suggested to Hux that he should have taken someone else with him, one of the remaining pilots from Poe’s squadron to be specific, but Rey had volunteered already and her flying skills were formidable enough that no one could protest without seeming biased against her as an outsider. They had _all_ volunteered actually and when Hux revealed he was taking Rey they looked mildly mutinous. They still offered to stand by, though, ready to come to their location immediately and help if needed.

He had another reason for taking Rey over anyone else, another thing he didn’t admit to anyone, which was that he wanted her Force abilities on hand if they were needed. He wasn’t entirely sure what she could do with them, but whatever they were, they were things no one else was capable of except possibly Kylo and he was likely the very last person in the galaxy who would have agreed to assist with this mission—at least not if the objective was keeping Poe alive after finding him.

They dropped out of hyperspace into an entirely vacant expanse of black sky dotted with stars but nothing else. They’d intended to coast in close until they found the place or found nothing but now Hux was considering a closer second jump rather than the slow inching along they’d planned. Based on the complete lack of disruption of the area around them this seemed a reasonable deviation on the plan.

He was about to suggest this to Rey when she lurched in her seat like she’d been electrocuted, her hands pulling on the controls and making the ship swoop sideways at a sharp angle it really wasn’t built for, making it feeling more like they were falling than flying for a few seconds which was disquieting to say the least. She apologized and righted them gently, turning their nose back onto the charted course.

“What just happened?” he asked, wondering if by the look on her face she would answer honestly.

“I felt something.”

“I guessed that part,” he said, trying very hard to keep the irritation he would not have suppressed with anyone else out of his voice. It felt gross in some indefinable way being cruel to Rey, and he couldn’t do it. She sometimes reminded him of a kitten he’d had as a child who—

“It’s . . . gone now,” she said without elaborating on what it was she’d sensed. He knew even without any details that he’d been right to bring Rey and not anyone else.

He felt so out of his depth in just about every way lately, especially since Poe had not returned almost two days before, that he found he was relying more and more on instinct than insight, and he took it as significant that Rey’s episode had occurred directly after he’d decided to alter the plan. He chose not to mention his idea after all, feeling the deviation could have changed something in a dangerous way, and they instead drifted slowly for a full twenty minutes before they were within sight of the place his once precious base had been.

There was no black hole, but a practical universe of scraps—both of the planet and the ships which had been fighting near it—were floating placidly around a very small but very bright little ball. Neither of them spoke for nearly a full minute after Rey had slowed them to a near stop at its edge, turning to drift along side rather than into it.

It was beautiful in a terrible way. The little star was too bright to looking at directly and it threw harsh shadows through the debris making it hard to see any of it clearly, each chunk white on the side facing the light and inky black on the side facing away.

They had a plan for this possibility: a pretty standard scanning program which would search through the junk and identify and catalogue it if possible. This version was modified to look only for parts of Poe’s ship and to ignore everything else. On the newer X-Wings, there would have been a black box, and they’d have been looking only for that. The one Poe had flown for the Republic had probably had one, but the one he’d inherited when Leia had recruited him was older and didn’t come with it installed. Hux had had to keep himself from cursing out loud at their lack of adequate technology when Leia had explained this after handing over the schematics for the ship Poe had flown on his latest mission.

Judging by the size of the field it would take several hours to sort through it all with them orbiting the outer edge of it in overlapping patterns like you’d wrap a ball of string to make sure they’d gotten every piece. This idea made him fidgety and nervous as he felt very strongly that every second was important but also that nothing could be skipped.

He found, to his relief, that while Rey had definitely favored chatting and telling stories with others back on D’Qar, that she was also capable of long periods of silence. He didn’t know her story fully, but she had grown up on Jakku according to Poe who’d heard it through his nosey droid and had no family or other attachments there. He had to assume she was used to not speaking as she’d had no one to speak to on her home planet.

Since they’d left Dagobah Hux had begun adding new files to his memories, like his personal Poe file, but about other people he’d spent enough time around to warrant the attention. Rey’s was the second largest of these after Leia’s whose file was split between personal observations, and facts from her official file in the Finalizer’s databanks. The others whom he’d had more than a few encounters with—Han, Chewie and Finn primarily—all had smaller files, but they existed and were growing steadily as well.

Once more than one had been created he’d started cross-referencing them unconsciously, linking details together which were similar across all of them. The one thing which had stood out among all of it and which pricked at him repeatedly in thoughtful moments was the lack of connection with _others_ in favor of _tasks_ which he shared with both Rey and Poe. Rey hadn’t consciously chosen a career over relationships—her job had been basic survival as he understood it—but it wasn’t as important _what_ she’d done exactly as the fact that, like Poe and Hux himself, she’d spent most of her life focused on something other than people and her connection to them.

There was also a telescopic effect in regard to the number of people around them and their individual emotional distance from them. Hux had been surrounded just about every moment of his life by a great number of people, but had been close to none, followed by Poe who had significantly less but made a few friends among them, and then Rey who had had no one and seemed to form bonds immediately with everyone she’d met since escaping her own isolated world. He didn’t have an explanation for why they’d all reacted these ways to their surroundings, he just saw the pattern and had dwelled on it more than a few times over the preceding days.

He’d ended up dozing off, not having slept much since the night before the attack on Starkiller, and woke when the scanning program had completed its task with a mild series of beeps. He sat up straight in his seat and tried to focus on the readout showing its findings. The results showed up in blocky green text on a black field and read:

Total number of items scanned: 22,236

Matching items for presets: 1

His throat clenched seeing it, terror wrapping his heart, but it wasn’t done spitting out information yet. A new line had popped up under the last which read:

Item match to preset: 27%

And under this a glowing outline of Poe’s T-70 model X-Wing appeared with a small section of the bottom left wing highlighted and flashing yellow. It looked like an access panel, maybe just intended for service purposes, not a functional part of the ship and probably generic enough that it could have simply mirrored ones installed across all X-Wings. Only twenty-seven percent. Not an exact match. Not definitive by any means. Not enough to panic over yet.

The read out skipped jerkily past the image and displayed a few more lines:

Size match: 50%

Color match: undetermined.

That section of the wing would have been flat black, not hard to determine, Hux thought. If the computer was unsure he felt it suggested there were other factors involved like another color, or markings which shouldn’t have been there.

It was enough for Hux to dismiss it.

It was enough to keep looking.

Even if it had been a perfect match, he might have talked himself into disbelieving it. He wasn’t feeling particularly sane.

Poe wasn’t here one way or another. 

It was time to go to the last place his plane had definitely existed according to their data.

As Rey reset the coordinates for the next jump he realized that he was far more afraid of what they’d find there than he had been about the possibility of being obliterated by black hole.

That would have been a painless death which ended almost at once. Finding the wreckage of Poe’s X-Wing would be an event just as violent, but death wouldn’t follow it as closely or neatly, ending the pain before it began. It would just go on and on until he _wished_ he were dead, but the actual discovery wouldn’t be merciful enough to provide that service.

* * *

 

 

They were greeted again by the black chasm of empty space. The plan was to loop around the area in widening circles, looking for dispersed wreckage first then to lock onto the path he would have taken had he continued at a cruising speed after leaving hyperspace. 

Hux didn’t think he could handle more tedious hours of searching for evidence of Poe’s death. He wanted to say it, wanted to suggest that they jump ahead again, altering the plan, but he was still unnerved by what had happened the previous time when Rey had reacted before he’d even voiced his proposed deviation.

He paused with the question pressed to the front of his thoughts and waited.

Rey had started her planned turn when he decided to test it by simply saying her name. When nothing happened and she only answered with a quiet sound of assent that she’d heard him he decided that was a good sign.

“I think . . . we should just look for him now. Along the flight path. Instead of doing this.”

Still focused on keeping the ship steady on the wide arc they were on Rey didn’t look at him.

“We could. I wanted to suggest it,” she said, like she was confessing to something she was ashamed of. “I just didn’t want you thinking I wouldn’t be thorough. I offered to help, and I mean to go as far as that takes us.”

She sounded like she was interviewing for a job, and it made Hux feel protective of her suddenly. It was like she was hoping to prove herself to everyone, like maybe they’d send her away back to her lonely home on Jakku if she didn’t cement her usefulness to them.

“I know you will,” he said. “And I want to go on. I can’t . . . do this part again.”

She immediately righted the ship and turned back in the opposite direction. She tapped her display to bring up the probable flight path of Poe’s ship and then increased their speed to faster than he might have been traveling. He would be days ahead, even if his engines had quit he would have continued on at the same pace forever or until his ship encountered some obstacle—

“We should jump from here,” Hux said, the sense that they needed to hurry now so strong it felt like the ship’s artificial atmosphere had been punctured and the vacuum of space was squashing him. “Jump ahead to half the distance. We won’t catch up this way. Not . . . in time.”

Rey didn’t ask what they were racing against, she just obeyed, carefully plotting the jump with a single, slow finger like she was afraid of typing it wrong. Her lips were moving, silently reading back each number before she okayed the maneuver.

More empty space when they slowed after that jump and she was typing again before he’d even started to speak, urging her to go three quarters of the way to Poe’s originally planned exit point.

Hux closed his eyes against the swirling tunnel of hyperspace, feeling sick seeing it so many times in one trip.

They came out near a planet that time. Their display identifying it as Yavin 5. It would be pointless to jump again as the space between them and the exit at D’Qar was close enough that they could have flown it in an hour at full speed. He tired not to think about them having possibly overshot him. If they’d had enough fuel he might have insisted they turn right back around and fly backwards along the path. They’d have to land first and refuel, maybe get a faster ship, maybe—

“There!” Rey shouted. “Right there! Do you see it?”

And for once, Hux didn’t care that she was loud, he felt like shouting himself. Directly ahead of them and growing steadily was the dim, spindly outline of the back of an X-Wing. It’s engines weren’t flaring, but, like he’d anticipated, the ship was still moving, drifting unconsciously through space like a sleeping person in a raft, carried on a steadily flowing river.

“Can we contact the surface from here?” Rey asked, whispering like she was afraid her yelling might scare Poe’s ship off if she spoke even at a normal volume.

“I don’t know. But it wouldn’t matter. We know where he is now, so we should go for the freighter and come back.”

The real reason he didn’t want to simply wait for someone to come was because he wanted to be on the ship actually getting Poe, not one just standing by watching. This was a foolish inclination which he chose not to justify to himself. He regretted it for a half second as they made the jump back to D’Qar’s orbit as loosing sight of Poe’s ship again was horrible.

Rey contacted the ground and they’d landed a minute later on a runway fully cleared except for the small freighter they’d be taking back up. A little group of people were already waiting, two fully suited and ready to go like they’d been waiting during all of the hours he and Rey had been gone.

The time it took to run across the space separating the little Y-wing from the larger ship felt too long, too tiring, like they were back on Starkiller trudging through snow.

Jess was among those in their new crew as well Iono, the Keshian with the strange eyes, who Poe had said came along with him from his old Republic squadron when he’d been recruited into the Resistance. 

Rey repeated the last coordinates of Poe’s ship to them and Jess dutifully tapped them in before they’d even left the surface. When they’d broken free of D’Qar’s gravity and were out in the weak grip of outer space Hux felt that same sense of needing to hurry that he’d felt before. He glanced at Rey, hoping to pick up some guidance from her. She was still, looking focused and no more anxious than was appropriate to the situation.

“Rey,” he said quietly, not wanting to ask too obviously in front of the others what he wanted to know. “Do you . . . feel anything?”

She half turned towards him, a questioning smile touching her lips.

“You know, like what happened when we first jumped . . .?” he prompted, unable to directly say that he was referring to her Force sensitivity.

She let her eyes fall shut. Her expression was blank at first and then her eyebrows drew softly together and she made a face.

“There’s something, but I don’t know what it is,” she said, sounding profoundly apologetic that she couldn’t figure it out for him.

“Is it about Poe?”

She shook her head so slowly it was barely a movement. She wasn’t sure, she just didn’t want to say it.

“I think . . . you’ll know better than I will?” she said like she wasn’t sure about that either.

“Know what?”

“What to do. I . . . when I met Maz before she said everyone can feel the Force. Not everyone can use it, but it’s there . . . around us. So you could—”

He shook his head the movement sharp and short, like a reverse echo of her slow one.

“I don’t know how to do that,” he said, irritated and uncomfortable as the others had turned to listen to them by that point.

No one spoke, they were all watching him. They didn’t have in their faces the same doubt he had, the same he would have looked at someone else with if they’d been babbling on about harnessing some intangible “power” they couldn’t see to help them. They were all believers in this thing, whatever it was—he’d heard all of them talk about it, wish each other well using its name even on several occasions since he’d arrived on their planet.

“You know what to do,” Rey said, her statement as sure as if she was recounting something which had just happened moments before.

“I _don’t_. Rey—”

She stepped behind him then and wrapped her arms around him in a weird sort of hug, placing her hands in the center of his chest, overlapping his heart, her arms just barely long enough to complete this loop. Jess and Iono waited. He turned his face away from them disliking that there were people watching this while knowing he couldn’t very well tell them to stop staring.

He didn’t know what to do. Rey was sweet, but possibly crazy, and this wasn’t going to work . . .

“Don’t jump back where we were,” he said calmly, not even having planned to speak beforehand, his own words feeling like they were coming from somewhere else. He didn’t feel that same sense that there was anything happening to him physically like when Rey had influenced him during and directly before their trip to Starkiller. “Jump ahead of him. We’ll need to . . . catch him.”

“The tractor beam on this ship isn’t very strong . . .” Iono said doubtfully. “It would depend on how fast he’s going. If that’s what you were suggesting?”

“Maybe,” Hux said, almost laughing at how incredibly stupid he felt giving such vague orders.

“It’s right,” Rey said, her jaw moving softly against his back as she spoke.

“Okay,” Jess said. “But that will take a second. We need to calculate the new distance factoring in your landing and the time we spent doing thi—”

Hux smiled, feeling better about at least knowing this part for sure and gave her the coordinates she’d need, having started doing the math as soon as he’d said where _not_ to jump, before saying they’d need to jump in front.

They were close to several planets—including D’Qar which was barely visible but there—after the jump. But there was nothing else around, the black landscape of the sky undisturbed by anything foreign to its basic makeup.

Jess and Iono both turned to stare at Hux again who was still being held by Rey in that silly embrace which they’d managed to maintain without grabbing onto anything during the jump.

Hux had been counting backwards in his head since the second they entered hyperspace and he counted out loud for their benefit on the last few numbers. Though he was sure of the accuracy of his calculations, his actual counting hadn’t been as exact so two more seconds passed before Poe’s ship actually appeared, but it was close enough that it seemed almost like he’d conjured it with his words.

Jess cheered in a way Hux might have assumed was common to the personalities of fighter pilots but which he felt she’d learned flying with Poe for no reason than that it reminded him of Poe’s wordless victory exclamations.

At first they couldn’t do anything but watch as he was beyond the reach of any of their equipment. Then things started going very fast. The ship alerting them with an obnoxious alarm to an object racing towards them at a dangerous speed, information and warnings scrolling fast across every screen in sight.

Iono had activated their tractor beam which slowed Poe’s ship significantly, and was continuing to slow it, but which didn’t halt it by any means.

“He’s going to hit us,” Jess blurted, allowing panic to overtake her momentarily.

“He’ll hit our shields first,” Iono answered grimly.

“Lower them?” she suggested with a shrug that made it a bit comical.

“You sound like him now,” Iono said, nodding out at the swiftly approaching ship with a nonchalance Hux found impressive. 

“That’s good,” Hux said, remembering that he’d been planning everything like how he thought Poe would do it, grabbing at silly, farfetched possibilities without judgement. That was where the idea to jump ahead had come from though he’d been too distracted by everyone watching him to recognize it. “Rey,” he said, patting her hand to indicate she could let go. She did but stayed close to him as she stepped back out to stand at his side.

Poe’s ship continued to slow, but still not enough. “Rey, can you . . . do something?”

She looked a bit frightened by this idea, not having expected to be asked to perform any direct tasks at that moment.

“You can’t make it worse,” Hux said, hoping that was true, needing Rey to believe it was. “Just slow him if you can, divert him a little if not so he doesn’t hit us directly at least?”

She nodded and stepped forward between where Jess and Iono were seated. She seemed unsure of what to do, but after a second she put her arm out in front of her, locked at the elbow like Kylo did when grabbing people or objects, only her fingers weren’t tensed the way his always were. Hers were only bent softly like she was waiting in a snowstorm to catch a single flake on the tip of her finger.

It was several seconds before anything obvious happened and whether it was just the closer range of the tractor beam or Rey’s influence, Poe’s ship finally slowed to a less drastic pace. He was approaching at the wrong angle though and Iono pointing this out came too late to stop it. Rey’s hold was steady though and the X-Wing didn’t slam into them as violently as it might have before. It grazed them and then came to a trembling stop, hanging lopsidedly in space with the tips of its starboard wings partially blocking their front windows.

“We can’t pull his ship in like that,” Iono said. “Unless you can do that?” He turned a little to look up at Rey who shook her head. “Then someone will have to go out and attach a towline so we can move into a better position without losing him and having to start this all over again . . .”

“I’ll do it!” Jess said, already undoing her restraints.

Hux stopped her once she was out of her seat.

“Just . . . help me with the suit,” he said, making it clear he would be the one going. Because he’d apparently lost his mind entirely.

She didn’t argue with him, and as soon as they were towards the back of the ship, away from the other two, Hux started to hurry her, not sure how long Rey could maintain what she was doing but not wanting to say that within earshot of her.

The EVA suit was bulky and, due to being made for a slightly shorter person, it bit into his shoulders under the heavy neck ring where the helmet attached. He welcomed this discomfort as it was keeping him present in the moment, almost like having a person hanging onto him from behind like Rey had done, only with their arms around his neck.

Jess clipped a line to the back of his suit and another to his belt which she indicated was the towline.

“Your gloves and boots are magnetic,” she informed, her voice sounding hollow to his ears through the helmet. “They hold pretty good, but don’t do anything too dumb.”

He gave her a thumbs up so she knew he’d heard her while fully intending to do any dumb, Poe-like thing which occurred to him as long as it had a chance of bringing the ship in safely.

He turned away once she’d shut the airlock and waited for the artificial gravity of the ship to release as the doors slid back, dumping him softly out into open space.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if there is more than the expected amount of typos and inconsistencies in here as I'm rushing to get this all up before school starts next week, because I don't want to leave you all hanging. 
> 
> Thank you SO MUCH for all of the lovely comments and insights on this fic. I've put off answering most of them for way too long, but I'm going to get to that this weekend as well. I read every one of them and they all make my day every time and make writing and posting well worth the effort. <3


	12. A Bittersweet Truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SO SORRY. I know this took forever. But I have many good excuses including school and hospitals and Every Antibiotic On Earth which I have now taken in the past few weeks. Better now! 
> 
> Suggested listening for this chapter: When I was Your Man by Bruno Mars.

The angular, faceted canopy of the T-70‘s cockpit was a mass of condensation on the inside making it look coated in round little jewels, blocking Hux’s view of the interior. One drop slid down the inside as he watched, cutting a dark path along the glass. He tried to press his face to it, forgetting the large, curved face-shield on his helmet until it bumped the glass preventing him from getting close enough to see inside. It was just darkness anyway. He placed his palm against the surface of the window and patted it, the padding on his glove making the touch feel bouncy and insubstantial. 

He balled his fist and attempted to knock, the loose weight of zero gravity preventing him from using much force. He was sure it wasn’t enough, felt he’d maybe have to wait until they’d taken the ship on board before he’d know for sure.

But then a pale shape appeared from the distorted gloom inside and landed on the glass, disrupting the water around it. It fell down again, Poe’s fingertips dragging streaks, clearing a wider area. Hux swiped at it on his side covering it with his hand so it blocked his view, driven by some overwhelming need to connect with the place Poe’s hand had been, even though multiple layers of glass, fabric and metal prevented anything like a real touch.

“You’re alive,” he said, though Poe wouldn’t hear it, only the group waiting back inside the ship. Their elated shouting filled his ear piece, uncomfortably loud.

The hand appeared again, slowly wiping a wider space around Hux’s glove until it was possible to see inside but too dim to catch the details Hux wanted. He grabbed at a small torch that was attached to his chest and lit it. It reflected off the glass, further obscuring his view in, but Poe would be able to see him, confirming that there was an actual person out there. 

He clipped the torch, still lit, back onto the front of his suit and at a lower angle it allowed him to see inside finally, the reflected light less harsh against the glass.

Poe looked half-conscious and like he was fighting sleep. He wasn’t smiling, which Hux had selfishly wanted. He wanted Poe to know it was him, and he wanted it _then_ , not back on the ship when everyone was there to distract from that revelation. Every second of Hux’s life spent as person who eschewed emotional responses had created a thick shell around him which cracked painfully and crumbled away as he floated there, holding to the ship by only one hand, the glove’s magnets strong enough while still to make it work.

He lifted his free hand again and drew on the glass though it made no mark, just hoping Poe would be watching close enough to see the shapes of the three letters he drew, spelling his own name invisibly. When Hux looked inside again, he saw Poe’s eyes were shut and felt inordinately disappointed. But Poe smiled then and with his own finger he drew the dripping outline of a heart on his side of the glass. It was so hokey, so ridiculous Hux was glad there was no one else there to see it, and that even his own face was hidden from Poe, concealing the expression of broken joy he felt contort it. He traced the image with his own finger to confirm it was him.

“Hux,” Jess said in his ear. “What’s happening? Do you have the line secured?”

“Oh, uh, yeah . . . I’ve got it. I mean, I’m doing it now,” he said, trying to pull himself back to what he was supposed to have been doing which was not passing moronic love notes through a fogged window.

He reached for his belt and had to try several times to undo the clip with his clumsy, gloved fingers. He held up the end so Poe could see it through the window and started to inch down the side of the hull to the hook Jess had described before sending him out. He had the clasp open and was about to thread it through the loop when the ship jerk sharply upwards. He threw his arm out instinctively, pointlessly trying to balance himself, and the end of the line flew from his hand and swished away in an arc, disappearing over the top of the ship below them.

“Shit! Shit, I dropped it!”

Overlapping voices in his ear echoed his swearing back at him. He placed both hands on the hull of Poe’s ship, steadying himself against it while it rocked frighteningly.

“Hux I can’t hold you much longer,” Rey said in a voice that suggested she was exaggerating her efforts and really meant she was losing her grip as she spoke.

“Come back in,” Iono said. “We’ll try again.”

“No,” Hux said, trying not to be sick as the ship started to drift further away from the one below. “I’m going to use my own line.”

Several people shouted against this action, but he ignored them, already reaching around to unclip the line on his back, feeling that there was almost no slack left in it already as it came free in his hand.

He was steadier that time, despite the increased difficultly, and managed it without even one tremor of his hand. He planted his feet and hands against the hull, using the maximum amount of hold the suit could afford to keep himself from losing contact.

“Okay. I got it.”

“That line wasn’t meant for this,” Iono said disapprovingly.

“Then I suggest you go very slowly,” Hux replied, too pleased with himself to let this chastisement dampen his victory.

While he had instructed them to do it, and was waiting for it to happen, it was still extremely disquieting to watch as the ship shifted away from the free floating X-wing and upwards, almost brushing his back as it passed. They maneuvered it carefully enough but the line attaching the smaller ship to the freighter still pulled taut and looked far too fragile as they settled back down into the right place.

“We can manage now with the tractor beam,” Iono said. “Pull yourself back along the lead before we do that.”

“No, it might break,” Hux argued.

“You might _die_ if—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Iono,” Jess said. “Just bring them in.”

Being caught in a tractor beam while inside of a ship had merely felt strange on the one occasion Hux had experienced it, but being on the _outside_ of a ship during it was a vastly different sensation. He wasn’t worried any more about the magnets holding at least, because the force of the beam pressed him against the metal and held him there like a giant hand had shoved against his back, pining him in place. He also couldn’t draw anything like a full breath and nearly passed out before they were inside. He dropped off the side of the hull as soon as there was a floor underneath him, hanging by his palms for a few seconds and then falling onto the deck, a sharp shock sounding in his knees and making him collapse. He wasn’t being trapped by the beam anymore, but he still felt desperate for better air than that inside of the suit and nearly removed the helmet before the airlock had closed.

As he’d expected, everyone converged on the area as soon as it was safe, making Hux glad he’d taken those moments to communicate with Poe outside, because they all blocked Hux during the effort to get Poe out of the ship without dropping him which Hux couldn’t help with in his EVA suit. He stripped it away quickly as they carried Poe away towards a bunk space against the far wall.

He was there as soon as he could be and pushed between Jess and Iono’s shoulders much less politely than he should have done to people who’d been instrumental in the rescue. Poe tried to speak as soon as Hux was in view but Hux clapped his hand firmly over Poe’s mouth.

“No, you need water. Don’t try to talk.”

Poe pulled at his wrist with more strength than Hux had expected, managing to force it down enough he could speak.

“I’m fine,” he said, the thin quality of his voice making his statement at least a partial lie.

“Just _wait_ ,” Hux said with amused irritation.

Jess went for the med box on the wall across from them, and Poe obeyed his gag order, not attempting to speak again until she’d returned with a canteen of electrolyte-infused water and several of the foil meal packets similar to the ones they’d survived on from the TIE fighter. Poe’s silence was almost worse it turned out, because he was watching Hux with a completely unchecked adoration Hux would have scolded him harshly for at any other time.

“Look, your favorite,” Hux said, holding up one of the packets, hoping to make Poe laugh and _stop looking at him that way_ before he did something unimaginable like _crying_ even a little bit in front of the other three standing behind him in an intrusively watchful half-circle.

“We should go . . . you know, _steer the ship,_ ” Rey said, and Hux turned enough to see that she’d looped her hands around the elbows of the other two and was pulling them away. “We can just fly back, it’s not far enough to bother jumping now . . .” She winked charmingly at Hux before turning, and though he found this embarrassing, he also felt a surge of real affection for her as well as he watched them leave, with Rey between the other two, her step containing just a hint of a skip as she went.

He turned back to Poe and glared at him when he tried to speak again, shoving the canteen into his hands in a forceful, silent command to drink first.

“How did you find me?” Poe asked after Hux finally decided he’d swallowed enough and took the canteen back.

“I’m very smart.”

“What I saw you doing didn’t look very smart . . .” Poe said, clearly admiring.

“There was some stupidity involved as well.”

“We call that ‘heroics’ over here, remember?”

Poe reached out to touch his cheek and Hux batted his hand away, then made like he was just wanting Poe to conserve energy by pushing it softly back onto the bunk by his side. The truth was if Poe touched him right then he _would_ cry, and he’d rather dive right back out of the airlock without the EVA suit than let that happen.

“How do I look?” Poe asked.

“Only slightly than worse than usual.”

Except a lot worse. Distressingly bad. He wondered how long Poe would have lasted if they hadn’t gotten there when they had, and he had to swallow a shaky exhale that was too close to a sob to risk letting it out. 

“So pretty good then?” Poe said, grinning weakly.

“Better than most, I suppose.” Which wasn’t untrue. Even half-dead, Poe was still beautiful enough to Hux to make him feel his heart would literally break if he looked at him directly for more than a few seconds right then.

“This isn’t a dream, is it?” Poe asked, laying back flat, with his eyes shut.

“I don’t know what I could say to convince you it wasn’t if it was . . .”

“Probably something uniquely sarcastic to what I’m going to suggest next,” Poe guessed.

“Because I’m not sarcastic in your dreams usually?”

“Oh no,” Poe said, shaking his head against the pillow. “In my dreams you always follow me around sighing happily and agreeing with everything I say.”

“Feel secure this isn’t a dream then,” Hux said flatly, and Poe laughed loudly which tapered quickly into a cough. Hux waited for this to abate before prompting Poe to say whatever it was he’d given the introduction for, promising to keep his “sarcasm”—he preferred to think of it as wit—to himself.

“I had a bit of free time to think over the past few days—” Poe started.

“Just ‘a bit’?” Hux interrupted, finding this vast understatement too amusing to not repeat.

“Yeah, it’s shocking the extra time you can find to do stuff like that without someone around picking apart everything you say and do . . .”

“You’d be bored if I didn’t,” Hux said confidently, relieved to be past the part where he felt like he might weep and back to their usual rhythm of exchanging affectionate barbs.

“Probably,” Poe agreed. “That’s why I think you should marry me.”

“To what end?” Hux blurted without even dwelling on it for a second.

“I thought the suggestion implied the end actually: so you’d be married to me.”

“I don’t understand _the point_ is all.”

Poe sat up, turning onto his side, propped on his elbow. He grabbed Hux’s arm and tugged him forward until he could slip his arm around Hux’s back.

“Because it’s romantic, Aldous.”

Hux squirmed, making a face at the use of his first name. He placed his hands on Poe’s chest and then removed them again quickly.

“You are absolutely _drenched_ in sweat right now,” he said as if this negated any possible romance the proposal might have contained.

“Better answer fast then, because I’m not letting go until I get one.”

“Is there even a universally recognized government anywhere now? You barely have a functional society where you live . . .”

“A ceremony performed by General Organa would be recognized on any planet you’d want to visit. I’d be happy to go marry you on one of them, too, if you’d prefer. I’ll marry you on every planet in the galaxy if that’s what it takes to make it official enough for you.”

“ _This_ is what you were thinking about while drifting around waiting to die?”

“No, I was thinking about this before we even left for Starkiller.”

Poe released him then and dug into the pocket on his flak vest.

“Beebee gave me this right before we took off. So I guess it was his idea really.”

He took Hux’s hand and dropped a small, cool circle of metal into his palm. It was a plain band with faint markings around the outside spelling something he couldn’t make out right away as the engraving was a bit sloppy.

“Is it traditional to give engagement rings between men in this sort of arrangement?” Hux asked, resorting to the most formal language he could manage, because he didn’t know what else to say.

“I don’t know. Maybe not. But Beebee didn’t know that. I think he made it himself . . .”

“What do you mean ‘ _didn’t_ know’? Where is he?” Hux asked, suddenly realizing how odd it was not having the little droid trying to encroach on their space, especially with Poe injured.

He turned and saw that BB-8 was sitting silent on the deck, released from the ship by someone—likely Rey—his head tilted forward and still, and while the lens which served as his eye always looked dark, there was a certain blankness to it now which suggested that he wasn’t operational any longer.

Poe’s face was lowered when Hux turned back, and a distinct weight in his posture confirmed BB-8’s demise more surely than actual tears would have done.

“There was some kind of electrical failure when we jumped. It happens . . .” Poe said, his matter of fact language not revealing what Hux was sure were his true feelings about it. Whatever Hux’s beliefs were about the level of “life” inherent in automations, he knew Poe had considered BB-8 as alive as any person he knew—probably more so on a strictly personal level. Not that he thought BB-8’s life was more valuable than truly sentient beings, but that he was more important to Poe in some very integral ways.

He also realized that while he hadn’t thought of it consciously, he had assumed BB-8 was with Poe to keep him company during his time alone in the ship all that time.

He climbed into the bunk, knowing that his weight was probably not the most comfortable given Poe’s weakened state, but sure Poe wouldn’t reject the contact. He didn’t, wrapping his arms around Hux’s back and twining one of his legs around Hux’s like he was locking him in place.

Hux didn’t say he was sorry, because he felt it would be an inadequate sentiment and hoped Poe understood that and didn’t assume it was callousness on his part.

“I can guess how much importance you probably place upon the dying wishes of droids . . .” Poe said. “But—”

“Not much for any other one. But for this one’s, quite a lot,” Hux said more easily than he would have guessed. “Even if you are being manipulative right now.”

“Romantic, Hux. It’s _romantic_.”

“Swindling more like. Your side is better at that than I ever would have imagined. Your precious general conned me into working for her in exchange for the man power and resources to find you.”

“I’m shocked you fell for that. She would have done it anyway.”

“I prefer to work for what I want,” Hux defended like it had been his idea to align himself with the Resistance rather than something put forth by Leia.

“Glad to be wanted that much then, as it saved my life.”

“I would have done anything,” Hux confessed, his hand leaping to Poe’s face involuntarily, where he pressed his fingertips to Poe’s mouth, one settling into that irregular space on the left side of his upper lip where it arched away from the bottom when he slept, when he smiled a certain way. Poe smiled then but didn’t ask what Hux was doing or why.

“I’ll go ahead and take that as yes to my proposal, I think.”

“While it’s a bit melodramatic of you to link those two things as it suggests you think you’ll _die_ if I don’t marry you . . . I’ll allow it.”

“Okay,” Poe said, laughing. “But try to sound more enthusiastic about it when you tell other people or _I’ll_ tell them you gasped and then fainted when I asked.”

“I wasn’t intending to be the one telling anyone.”

“Oh, too bad, because _you_ have to tell Rey.”

“No. No, please. She’ll hug me.”

“She’ll hug you anyway, but she’ll _hurt_ you if she finds out from someone else.”

Hux couldn’t debate that, she absolutely would. “She’s far more scary than she should be for how tiny she is . . .”

“Size is hardly ever the best indicator of strength or resilience,” Poe said, serious like Hux had only seen him a few times since they’d met. He knew that while Poe didn’t turn to look at the motionless form of BB-8 when he’d spoken, his comment at least encapsulated if not entirely referred to his droid companion’s unusually lifelike qualities which Hux could admit were more than he’d ever seen from one of them before.

For Hux this odd bit of wisdom also rang with a bittersweet truth about his now destroyed super weapon which had been bested by a mere handful of ill-equipped rebels who proved themselves stronger despite their appearance of being inferior as far as objective power. The fact that BB-8 shared Starkiller’s general shape but on a vastly smaller scale and that they’d expired together, but with him the clear victor, made this assessment of Poe’s as factual in Hux’s mind as any of the concrete data he’d hoarded his whole life and held like a shield against ever experiencing the kind of strange pain of a loss like Poe’s.

Of a loss like Hux’s if they hadn’t found Poe on time.

After they’d landed, and Poe had been taken away to med, Hux took a moment to examine the ring. It didn’t fit on his third finger, but worked fine when he placed it on the index of his left hand. Under one of the lights standing at the edge of the runway he worked out the letters scrawled on its side and determined they were names. His and Poe’s, etched there in Aurebesh in what looked like the scrawl of human child but more likely done by BB-8 who was not unlike an actual child in many ways—both in general and in regard to his master who would mourn his death the way Hux had never mourned a thing in his life. He recalled Poe saying that a droid had more feeling than he did after Hux had tried to steal that grave marker on Dagobah and how this had amused Hux at the time. Now that he knew the way in which Poe respected BB-8 on an emotional level, the statement was very different. Poe hadn’t meant that droids had _no_ feeling making Hux’s indifference a sterile comparison. Poe had meant that it was sad Hux couldn’t match the same level of caring, as an actual _person_ , that a tiny robot who would lovingly craft a wedding ring for someone could.

He decided he wouldn’t let that be true about himself from that point on, and tried to prove that, at least to himself as a start, by catching Rey as she left the ship and telling her about Poe’s proposal. As predicted, she hugged him, and he returned it warmly, marking that in his heart as the real beginning of his new life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I should never, ever promise sequels, but I also know there are a few loose ends in here. I have started a sequel, but it might be in production forever. The next few weeks are going to be insanely busy, so it definitely won't be before October as I won't have time to write again before mid-September. I'm hoping I can make it happen, but if not, I hope the dropped threads here are not ruinous to this story as a stand alone. 
> 
> Anyway. Thank you so much for reading and commenting. I'll be going back to insert art links for a few chapters in the notes on those as some lovely, amazing people have made edits and done drawings for this story and I want to make sure everybody gets to see them! You can also find them on [my tumblr](http://kisskisscrush.tumblr.com/) under the ALATL tag.


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